A look into my Scholarship & Inquiry.
My scholarship centers on women’s bodies, sexualities, and reproductive lives across cultural, racial, and institutional contexts. Grounded in intersectionality and Black feminist epistemology, my research examines how power operates through sexuality, health, education, religion, and social systems to shape women’s bodily autonomy, vulnerability, and well-being.
Across my work, I engage topics including reproductive health, prevention education, sexual violence, female genital cutting, teenage pregnancy, and racialized gendered health disparities. I am particularly attentive to how Black, African, Muslim, and diasporic women come to understand their bodies, sexual health, consent, and agency, as well as the ways institutions such as the military, healthcare systems, and educational spaces regulate, neglect, or discipline bodies. My research prioritizes lived experience, cultural context, and critical inquiry to challenge dominant narratives and advance more ethical, culturally grounded approaches to sexual and reproductive health.
Research Focus
Women’s sexual and reproductive health
Sexual health education, consent, and prevention
Black feminist and intersectional approaches
Sexual violence and reproductive harm
Female genital cutting
Racialized gender health disparities
Institutional cultures of sexual health, including the military
Works in Progress
Sexual Health, Readiness, and the Limits of Training:
An Intersectional Socio-Ecological Analysis of Sexualities Education in the U.S. Army
This doctoral dissertation examines how sexual health and sexualities education are understood, delivered, and constrained within the United States Army. Using intersectional and socio-ecological frameworks, the project analyzes how training, policy, and institutional culture shape sexual health knowledge, prevention practices, and access to care. The study interrogates how “readiness” is defined and operationalized, and what remains unaddressed when sexual well-being is treated as peripheral to mission readiness.
Black Women’s Genital Pain
An emerging research project focused on Black women’s experiences of genital pain and the clinical, cultural, and structural factors that shape recognition, care-seeking, and treatment. This work centers bodily knowledge, patient voice, and racialized gender inequities in sexual and reproductive health care.
Living with Genital Pain: An Autoethnography of Black Womanhood, Surgical Recovery, and Digital Care on TikTok
An autoethnographic project exploring embodied pain, surgical recovery, and the use of digital platforms as sites of knowledge-sharing, care, and survival. This work examines how Black women navigate genital pain through storytelling, community formation, and informal health education in online spaces.
Methodological Approach
My work is grounded in qualitative, interpretive, and feminist methodologies that center lived experience, context, and power. I draw on intersectional and Black feminist epistemologies to treat embodied knowledge, narrative, and participant voice as legitimate and essential sources of insight.
Across projects, I use methods such as in-depth interviewing, qualitative thematic analysis, autoethnography, and institutional analysis to examine how sexuality, health, and harm are produced, understood, and addressed within social and organizational systems. My approach is attentive to ethics, reflexivity, and the responsibilities of researching intimate and marginalized experiences.