Overview
As an anthropologist, I am interested in how market integration influences human movement and infectious disease ecology. My dissertation work focuses on these relationships in rural northeast Madagascar, where smallholder farmers are increasingly shifting from subsistence crops to cash crops, particularly vanilla. This change has wide-ranging effects on the health of farmers and their families, and I use tools from network science, epidemiology, and human biology to better understand these effects with an aim to inform interventions. In doing so, I draw on One Health as an organizing framework that emphasizes the interconnections of human, animal, and environmental health.
Current Appointments & Affiliations
Recent Publications
Circulating Epstein-Barr Virus Antibody Levels as a Biomarker of Socioecological Adversity in Amazonian Ecuador.
Journal Article American journal of human biology : the official journal of the Human Biology Council · May 2025 ObjectivesCirculating Epstein-Barr virus antibodies (EBV-Ab) are used as a biomarker of chronic stress in high-income settings, but their relevance in environments with a high burden of infectious disease, nutritional constraints, and limited reso ... Full text CiteClimate Change Perceptions and Adaptive Behavior Among Smallholder Farmers in Northeast Madagascar
Journal Article PLOS Climate · March 7, 2025 Climate change is impacting the food security and health of people worldwide, and the risk for smallholder farmers is particularly high. While many studies have forecast changes to food production at regional scales, fewer studies have directly assessed th ... Full text CiteDisentangling social, environmental, and zoonotic transmission pathways of a gastrointestinal protozoan (Blastocystis spp.) in northeast Madagascar.
Journal Article American journal of biological anthropology · November 2024 ObjectivesUnderstanding disease transmission is a fundamental challenge in ecology. We used transmission potential networks to investigate whether a gastrointestinal protozoan (Blastocystis spp.) is spread through social, environmental, and/or zoo ... Full text CiteRecent Grants
US-Israel Collab: Market Integration, Land Use, and Pathogen Transmission in Rural Madagascar
ResearchGraduate Student · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2023 - 2028Doctoral Dissertation Research: Human mobility and infectious disease transmission in the context of market integration
Inst. Training Prgm or CMEPI-Fellow · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2024 - 2026BSF Travel Grant - Market Integration, Land Use, and Pathogen Transmission in Rural Madagascar
TravelPI-Fellow · Awarded by US-Israel Binational Science Foundation · 2025 - 2025View All Grants