Political sociology, nations and nationalism, globalization and development, contemporary China, tourism, environmental sociology, mobilities, and social media

My work centers on the politics of mobility, specifically how transportation and travel shape our perceptions of the world and our collective behavior. Transportation systems not only build off outstanding power structures but affect how social boundaries are drawn and maintained. Broadly conceived, my goals are to bring studies of automobiles, highways, streets, railways, bicycling, and traffic regulation into mainstream sociology. Exploring geographic mobility is especially important in a world marked by climate change, where transportation constitutes over ¼ of global greenhouse gas emissions, and has been the fastest growing category of emissions.

My current research focus is exploring the politics of mobility in contemporary China. I demonstrate how highways are integral to state building, how tourists help stabilize and normalize ethnic differences in China, how traffic accidents are processed as moral crises, the use of roadside tourism for economic development in Tibet, and how techno-policing of streets is used as an instrument of building Chinese soft power. My most recent papers on this topic have been published in China Quarterly and Social Problems.