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Welcome! I am currently a postdoctoral research associate at the USC Annenberg School for Communication, where I work with the Metamorphosis Project.

My research focuses primarily on the experiences of new immigrant families in adapting to their new local environments. As the numbers of newly arrived individuals and families continue to reconfigure the meaning of community in the world’s major urban centers, Los Angeles has provided the perfect natural laboratory for investigating a local phenomenon being reproduced worldwide. Immigration is intimately intertwined with the development and proliferation of an ever-widening range of communication technologies that facilitate connections across borders, across a new community, and within family and interpersonal networks.

The realities of immigration, and processes of settlement, are not a common focus of traditional communication research, although communication theories and foci are a rich foundation from which to research how immigrants come to understand and connect within a new environment. The communicative processes and forms inherent in the immigration experience form the nexus of my research interests, including:

  • The media (mainstream, ethnic, community) that immigrants and their families connect with as their guide to their new local environment;

  • How families navigate information resources to make meaningful connections with health care resources, social services, and schools, and how those connections are/are not maintained over time;
  • Language negotiation in families and children’s roles as linguistic and cultural brokers;
  • Intergroup communication dynamics between long-settled residents and immigrant newcomers; and

  • Relationships between family interaction and civic engagement (including political participation, collective efficacy, and community belonging)