Mentorship
I receive many requests for graduate supervision, and while I do my best to respond, the best way to express interest is to simply list me as a potential supervisor in your application. For honors supervision, please schedule a meeting with me to assess fit.
For students requesting recommendation letters, please note that I am only writing them for:
1) Students whose work I’ve read and graded (i.e., either in a seminar context or as their honors supervisor)
2) Students who have worked as my RA or TA
Teaching
I view teaching as a vocation, a purposeful way to make an intervention in the world. In recognition of my commitment to my students, I was awarded the Herbert Blumer Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching, the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, the Certificate in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, and the Teaching Effectiveness Award at UC Berkeley. Click here to read the qualifying essay for this last award, “Going Public: Designing Writing Assignments with Social Impact.” In addition, my class on the Sociology of modern romance was once featured on NPR’s Morning Edition.
McGill University
Winter 2026
SOCI505: “Sociology of Digital Intimacy”
Over the past two decades, more and more of our relational lives have migrated online: friendships that unfold through screens, intimacies struck through platforms, and now, the rise of AI companions designed to offer personalized care and even romance. What once felt exceptional, turning to technology to meet, communicate, or connect, has now become the norm. In many cases, the first draft of our relationships now happens in digital spaces long before (or instead of) a face-to-face encounter.
This course asks what these shifts reveal about the contemporary social world. How does the movement of relationships into digital environments reshape the ways we form desire, trust, and commitment? What happens to ideas of authenticity, intimacy, and vulnerability when mediated by platforms, algorithms, and now generative AI systems capable of simulating companionship? How do emerging practices, from self-tracking sexuality to maintaining parasocial ties, from algorithmic matchmaking to human-AI relational bonds, reconfigure the boundaries between public and private, individual and collective, human and more-than-human?
By drawing on theories of culture, economics, gender, race, and selfhood, this course examines the evolving landscape of modern intimacy in an era where the line between “online” and “offline” is increasingly blurred. We will explore not only how people navigate this changing terrain, but also how technological design choices and the institutions that underpin them shape the possibilities, inequalities, and moral debates surrounding digital relationships today.
Fall 2025
SOCI301: “AI & Society”
Little of our lives today remains untouched by Artificial Intelligence (AI), which makes understanding its reach and influence on society increasingly pertinent. This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to critically dissect AI's origins, proliferation, and ubiquity from social, political, and philosophical angles. We explore questions such as: what makes the intelligence of this kind ‘artificial,’ and how does it differ from other types of intelligence, such as that of humans or animals? What is the relationship between AI, natural language processing, machine learning, big data, and algorithms? Why is it so difficult to create AI systems that align with human values? How can we critically examine the production processes of generative models to understand who they help and leave behind? Using interdisciplinary lenses, this course offers a dynamic look at the promises and limits of AI in delivering a utopic technological future.
Past Courses
Winter 2025
SOCI235: “Technology & Society”
What does it mean to live in an era where everything seems to be shaped by technological shifts? And how can we better understand the very artifacts that put society in a constant state of revolution? This course explores the intricate interplay between technology and society, examining how technological advancements shape and are shaped by cultural, economic, and political forces. Students will critically analyze the social implications of emerging paradigms, from surveillance capitalism to artificial intelligence, and investigate how technology shapes micro, meso, and macro-level interactions. Through interdisciplinary readings, case studies, and discussions, this course offers a dynamic look at the challenges and opportunities of a rapidly evolving world that increasingly prioritizes technological innovation above all else.
SOCI345: “Social and Intimate Relationships in the Digital Age”
Fall 2024
SOCI601: “Qualitative Research Methods 2”
What does it take to become an ethnographer? This course, which focuses on field research (i.e., variations of observations and interviews), provides the essential toolkit to help one advance their skills at documenting, interpreting, and theorizing human behavior in offline, online, and hybridized settings. Throughout, we will read representative ethnographic articles and books, as well as explore key theoretical, epistemological, and ethical issues surrounding field research. Most importantly, because ethnographic research is best learned by doing, you will design and execute an original piece of research that deploys ethnography as the primary method. At the end of the day, the course aims to cultivate “ethnographic sensibilities” to help you navigate the thick and thin of observing people in the wild.
UC Berkeley
“Artificial Intelligence & Society: The Promises and Limits of Technological Futures”
“The Give and Take: Sociology of the Sharing Economy”
In recent years, the rise of the sharing economy has given rise to entire clusters of digital platforms that have transformed how we consume and engage in economic activities. Apps such as Airbnb and Uber have become so commonplace that it is hard to imagine traveling or getting around without them. However, as sharing economies grow, they become the very capitalistic corporations they once sought to deliver us from. We peel open the world of ‘sharing’ in this class by investigating its moral underpinnings and economic logics. Can Uber and Airbnb really consider themselves part of the ‘sharing’ economy when they facilitate commercial transactions? What exactly is ‘sharing,’ and how does it differ from concepts such as gifting or reciprocity? Conceived originally to sidestep traditional work structures and hierarchies, how does the sharing economy exacerbate existing forms of social inequalities? Students will walk away from the class with a more critical and nuanced look at these emerging markets and the world of alternative consumption.