My research provides empirically driven analyses of emergent sex practices in contemporary society. Whether it is people looking for love (dating apps), or people who have moved on from human love (love and sex dolls), I am curious as to how and why people use technology to fulfill sexual and emotional desires. In our digital age, it is unsurprising that we use technology for our passions (as we use technology for everything else, more or less). And yet, persistent cultural anxieties and fears surround the integration of technology with sex. These fears can be traced back decades, even centuries in some cases, but a key issue remains the same: it is people who decide how to use technology in their personal lives.

In both my research and teaching, I strive for understanding complexity. I embrace contradiction as an opportunity for examining the puzzles of social life. Take, for example, dating apps. While dating apps introduce new possibilities by expanding people’s social networks, which can benefit people looking for specific types of partners that are less easy to find (think, polyamorous-friendly people across disparate rural spaces), they are also exhausting as the number of “successful” matches is low. Not only that, but for women, people of color, and queer dating app users, dating apps open the door to digital harassment, fetishization, and violence. Does any single benefit or consequence give us enough of a reason to embrace or delete dating apps forever? Or, are these issues a wrinkle in the history of heteronormativity, technological development, and society?

On this website you can access PDFs of my published work, syllabi from my previous courses, and learn a little bit about who I am. If you are interested in learning more, or have a media inquiry, feel free to check out the links below or contact me using the form provided on this website.