The Expert served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali (1996-7) and conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Guinea (2002-03) for her doctorate in anthropology (2004, University of Kentucky). As a Fulbright Scholar in 2011-12, she taught Development Studies at Mzumbe University in Tanzania. She publishes on cultural topics of household, rites of passage, kinship, and gender and currently teaches at Missouri State University as an Associate.
LGBTQ, Child abuse, sexual abuse/assault, gender-based violence/domestic violence, child soldiers, forced marriage, FGM/FGC, human trafficking, forced conscription/refoulment, ex-combatant reintegration, likelihood of destitution or homelessness, land tenure disputes, ethnic/religious/tribal discrimination or persecution, Torture/Risk of political persecution/Risk from state actors, Risk of retaliation, Safe internal relocation, Sufficiency of Protection, Healthcare Access/Health systems capacity, HIV/AIDS, rites of passage, kinship, gender.
COI expertise on FGC cases
2020 "Clothing Cannot Improve Moral Behavior”: Pilgrimage, Fashion, and Entrepreneurship in a West African Market. In Reconfiguring Muslim Pilgrimage through the Lens of Women’s New Mobilities, edited by Marjo Buitelaar, Manja Stephan-Emmrich, and Viola Thimm. Routledge.
2020 Designing Pious Couture: Guinean Beauty Entrepreneurs through Social Media. Africa and the Diaspora: Intersectionality and Interconnections, edited by Jamaine Abidogun and Sterling Recker. Cambridge Scholar Publishers.
2018 Narrating Rape: An Ethnographic Case-Study of Adolescence, Schoolgirls, and Non- Consensual Sexual Debut in Tanzania. Journal of Aggression, Maltreatment and Trauma 28(1):106-125.
2016 “Phones Mean Lies”: Secrets, Sexuality and the Soul of Mobile Technology on an East African College Campus. Journal of Economic Anthropology 3(2):254-65.
2011 Identity, Bodies, and Second-Generation Returnees in West Africa. Transnational Childhoods, Series on Gender and Globalization, pgs. 119-39, University of Toronto Press
2007 Gifting Mecca: Importing Spiritual Capital to West Africa. Mobilities 2(3):363-81.