Research Areas
The Made‑in‑Africa Evaluation Framework (MAE)
I explore decolonial approaches to thinking about and practicing evaluation as a tool for social justice and community‑driven transformative change. The Made‑in‑Africa Evaluation (MAE) Framework resonates with me because it honors Ubuntu, African ways of being, seeing, relating, and doing, as well as community priorities, agency and lived expertise. These principles guide how I understand evaluation as a relational, contextually grounded practice. My work examines the evolution of MAE and its core tenets, how MAE principles are operationalized in various settings and the development of practice guidelines to advance MAE.
HIV and Sexual Health
As a member of the MSU Research Group on HIV and Sexual Health, I contribute to research focused on understanding how to end the HIV epidemic through community-based action. Our work focuses on youth and young adults at high risk of HIV and other STIs, with particular attention to sexual minority youth and young adults of color.
Across individual, programmatic, organizational, and structural levels, we examine the factors that shape young people’s ability to stay healthy and access affirming care. This includes identifying effective HIV prevention programs, understanding how evidence‑based interventions are implemented in community settings, and exploring strategies to reduce stigma, discrimination, and barriers to HIV‑related services.
Psychosocial Wellbeing
My work explores how individuals and communities in their diversity understand, experience, navigate, and sustain psychological and social wellbeing across diverse contexts.
Safer, More Inclusive Health Services
I study how health systems, facilities or services can become more affirming, accessible, and inclusive for people who occupy marginal spaces in society or underserved social locations.
Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR)
For many people globally, the right to make free and informed decisions about their bodies and their sexual and reproductive health remains out of reach. Limited access to information, services, and supportive environments continues to threaten wellbeing across communities.
My research explores the social determinants of SRHR, and I evaluate SRHR programs to understand how services can become more accessible, equitable, affirming, and transformative.
Gender‑Based Violence (GBV)
As a Graduate Research Assistant in the Michigan State University Research Consortium on Gender-Based Violence (RCGV), I’m working with Prof. Becki Campbell, Dr Katie Gregory and the RCGV community on a collaborative project synthesizing scholarship on survivor-centered, community engaged approaches to researching GBV. We aim to understand how “community engagement” is operationalized across GBV research and what it means and looks like in practice to center survivors in the research process.