I am a historian that focuses primarily on the history of medicine and African American history. My work also examines the history of New Orleans and Louisiana, as well as transregional urban history broadly, and modern African history.

My book A City without Care: 300 Years of Racism, Health Disparities, and Healthcare Activism in New Orleans (University of North Carolina Press, May 2023) examines the rise and perpetuation of the racialized health care system in New Orleans from the city’s founding through the present. This system has largely exploited and excluded African Americans as patients and practitioners. The work explores how racialized health care served as a key component of the slave-based economy, became institutionalized with the end of Reconstruction and the rise of Jim Crow, helped make and supported segregation, and still exists. The book details the way that the historically white medical system financially benefitted benefitted members of the medical community, accommodated and supported a racist economic system, and benefitted from municipal, state, and federal funding and policies. The work also examines the impact on on Black residents, including disparities in disease and mortality rates; and the Black struggle for access to healthcare and improved health, including the creation of an alternate Black medical district centered around Flint Goodridge Hospital.

I have published academic articles in the Journal of African American History, Louisiana History, Federal History, and Safundi: the Journal of South African and American Studies.

I am also active in the field of Public History. I have previously created digital history content for New Orleans Historical, a place-based history tour app and website; Freedom on the Move, an online database of advertisements for enslaved people that escaped to freedom; the Hurricane Digital Memory Bank, an online archive dedicated to preserving the stories of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; and the Georgetown Slavery Archive, which examines the university’s connections to slavery. I have a background in the museums field, with previous work as an archaeology intern at Mount Vernon and Space History intern with the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. At my current position, I helped create a new Public History certificate program, and won funding to build a digital history lab. I am also currently helping to lead a grant-funded, interdisciplinary project that is collaborating with the residents of Smith Ridge, a community in Terrebonne Parish, Louisiana founded by formerly enslaved African Americans after the Civil War, to document their history and the impact of environmental changes.