Current Focus

In Butte County, we live with wildfires each year. We know the fires will come. The responsible questions are: are we ready, and are we reducing risk now?

My research on the Camp Fire taught me something that stays with you: the most dangerous moment is often the evacuation itself, when roads get gridlocked, routes become confusing and unmanageable, communication fails, and the fire moves faster than people can process. In those moments, people can do everything right and still be in danger.

My Camp Fire and wildfire research examines catastrophic fire as both an environmental hazard and a deeply social event that reveals the vulnerabilities built into communities, institutions, infrastructure, and everyday life. Drawing on my own experience living in Butte County and my interviews with 61 Camp Fire survivors, this work centers the lived experience of evacuation, displacement, trauma, and recovery after the 2018 Camp Fire, the deadliest wildfire in California history. In “The Fires Will Come: Will You Know How to Survive?,” I argue that wildfire preparedness must move beyond individual responsibility alone and confront the realities of fast-moving fires, limited evacuation routes, gridlocked roads, disorientation, communication gaps, and the long-term psychological effects of surviving fire.

A central theme of this research is that many communities in the West already live in “Fire Country”: places where fire is not a distant possibility but a recurring condition of life. My work highlights the need for practical, community-level interventions that reduce death, injury, and evacuation trauma, including improved alternate escape routes, clearly marked evacuation signage, fire-refuge areas, stronger local communication systems, and planning that recognizes the needs of vulnerable residents. Across this agenda, I connect wildfire research to broader questions of inequality, public health, environmental justice, community resilience, and institutional preparedness, asking not only how communities recover after disaster, but how they can be better prepared when the fires come.

My food insecurity research agenda examines how social policy, immigration status, environmental disruption, and institutional systems shape access to food and nutrition resources among vulnerable populations. A central focus of this work has been food insecurity among college students, particularly DACA-eligible and undocumented students, whose experiences are shaped not only by financial hardship but also by sociocultural, environmental, and policy barriers. Through exploratory research with students at a midsized Western university, my collaborators and I have examined perceived drivers of food insecurity, coping strategies, and constraints on participation in programs such as SNAP/CalFresh. This work highlights the ways that immigration policy, stigma, limited eligibility, and campus resource structures intersect to affect students’ food security and well-being.

More recently, my research has expanded to examine food access and nutrition assistance in the broader community, with attention to how disasters and public health emergencies disrupt already fragile food systems. In collaboration with colleagues, I have studied Market Match utilization among CalFresh recipients at farmers’ markets in Butte County, California, focusing on the effects of the 2018 Camp Fire and the COVID-19 public health emergency. Across these projects, my research seeks to identify the structural barriers that limit equitable food access while also documenting community and institutional strategies that can improve participation in food assistance programs. Together, this agenda is grounded in a commitment to food justice, policy-relevant research, and strengthening supports for students, immigrant communities, and low-income households.