Biography

Originally from Richmond, Virginia, I most recently lived in Baltimore, Maryland before moving to Ithaca, New York. I attended Johns Hopkins University for my undergraduate studies, earning a BA in English and Psychology. Within English, I was most interested in early American Gothic literature and Computational Literary Studies, which was the topic of my senior thesis, Machines over Mind: Computational Literary Studies and the American Gothic. My interest in using computational appraoches to literature began when I learned to code and thought that my literary analyses could benefit from quantitative approaches alongside traditional close-reading methods. My current research expands on this.

My psychology coursework focused on cogntitive psychology, particularly in regards to perception. I joined Dr. Chaz Firestone's Perception and Mind Lab and worked with him and Dr. Jorge Morales on a project at the intersection of vision science and philosophy. I followed up with research on the perception of time across different sensory modalities. I also worked on a few projects in more of a conceptual capacity with Dr. Janice Chen regarding memory research that focused on narratives and even narrative structure. Both of these labs informed my current research in one form or another.

After graduating from Hopkins in 2021, I continued to work as an Admissions Officer for my alma mater, where I was able to travel North America and provide college advising information for high school students. I was particularly focused on resources and access for rural students that were interested in applying to college, working on several projects to identify rural students, increase outreach, and reduce barriers for them to attend. At the same time, I also completed a part-time MS in Geographic Information Systems at Hopkins with a focus on geospatial data science and programming. These courses, along with my continued interest in Computational Literary Studies informed my current research, which combines cultural studies, quantitative methods, and geospatial analysis.

Throughout my time in Baltimore, I played futsal (a form of indoor soccer) semi-professionally for the Baltimore Kings. Soccer, and especially futsal, has been a passion of mine since a child. I attended the US Youth Futsal National Championship tournament with FutsalRVA when I was 17 as the leading scorer and was very honored to receive the David Pickeral scholarship from my club team, Virginia Legacy. I was also captain of the Hopkins Men's club soccer team for a few years, and attended many US Futsal Northeast Regional Championships with the Kings over the years. Most recently, I helped the Kings work towards attending the 2024 US Futsal National Championship for the first time, though I could not attend due to injury.