Research

Interests

Energy Policy; Energy Justice; Collaborative Governance, Local Governance, Organization Theory, Climate Change; Sustainability

Government Policy Advisor and Wind Energy Specialist, Community Engagement for Local Wind Farm Project, Summer 2023

Steelhead Americas, Vestas

• Description: Wind and solar projects are proliferating in the Midwestern United States, and many communities in Kansas have embraced the shift toward sustainable energy technology. Yet because of entrenched values around land use and increasing polarization around issues of impact in communities, a grass-roots⎯and pseudo-grassroots⎯style resistance has emerged in many rural communities. We, therefore, propose a case study in Osage County, Kansas, where a two-year wind energy project recently stalled after a moratorium on all sustainable energy projects was passed by the Osage County Board of Commissioners. Osage County is a perfect setting for a research and community engagement project to analyze the impacts of renewable energy on the local landscape, economy, and community and to understand how value conflicts might be resolved in light of the communities’ needs and visions for its future.

• Project Manager: Sara Taliaferro

Graduate Research Assistant, Dealing with Disruption: Investigating the Micro-level Underpinnings of City Response to the Climate Crisis, 2021-2023

Institute for Policy & Social Research (IPSR), University of Kansas, Lawrence, United States

• Grant: National Science Foundation (NSF)

• Principal Investigators: Dr. Rachel M. Krause, Dr. Gwen Arnold

• Activities: Data collection, survey instrument development, survey modeling in Qualtrics, managing dissemination of surveys, building and analyzing statistical models, writing literature reviews, conference papers and journal papers, presenting at conferences, conducting systematic literature reviews, newspaper archival search, developing websites, network data collection, developing interview instruments, conducting interviews, qualitative data coding and analysis

Principal Investigator, Energy justice advocacy program: The administrative burden of applying for energy assistance programs, Spring 2022

Lawrence, United States

• Grant: Sierra Club Kansas Chapter, $5,000

• Advisor: Ty Gorman, Sierra Club

• Interns: Katia Rivera-Cobian, Sophia Pascente 

• Activities: Educating and engaging undergraduate students, at the University of Kansas, in energy justice scholarship and advocacy, conducting qualitative interviews

Master's Capstone Project: Developing a Climate Action Plan for Illinois State Parks, the Rock Cut State Park, 2020

Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign-Urbana, United States

• Client: Illinois Department of Natural Resources

• Supervisor: Dr. Brian Deal, Smart Energy Design Assistance Center (SEDAC)

• Advisor: Dr. Sean Kennedy

Research Assistant, Spring 2019

Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, United States

Assistant to Professor Asef Bayat

• Developing a personal website

Master's Thesis: Developing a Sustainability Rating System for School Buildings by Analytical Network Process (ANP) analysis (in Farsi), 2017

School of Architecture, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

• Advisor: Dr. Ali Vakili Ardebili