Writing
I have a strong background in writing and written communications to complement my design skills. With a BA in Anthropology and Gender Studies and an MA in Linguistic Anthropology, I have the ability to write in many different styles and for varying audiences, in voices ranging from academic to casual and approachable.
My work in anthropology and gender studies has received honours such as the Gold Medal for the UWO graduating class of 2022, a Certificate of Achievement from the Canadian Anthropology Society, the UBC Sentinel Prize in Pop Culture Anthropology, and a WGSRF Essay Prize nomination.
Check out some of my publications here, many of which synthesize my own independent academic research and project management! Or, visit my ResearchGate profile!
“Awww how sweet”: infantilizing referential language use and perceptions of LGBTQ+ validity on Instagram
Collective Research in Anthropology Journal (CORA)
Issue 2, 2024
Exploring over 3000 Instagram comments, this research features a critical discourse analysis of how referential language is used differentially and potentially harmfully on social media posts made by LGBTQ+ couples, and aims to help speakers understand the complex relationships between motivation and effect in allyship-related language.
You can’t say that on TikTok : cxnsxrshxp, algorithmic (in)visibility, and the threat of representation
University of British Columbia, Department of Anthropology Theses and Dissertations Repository, 2024
This thesis identifies several linguistic categories employed to evade algorithms in playful, creative, and furtive ways, and takes up the roles of fear, danger, and threat in affectual responses that drive malicious content reporting. Through a gender and sexuality analysis, we can understand expressions of sex(uality) on TikTok and the efforts of users to invisibilize and police this content as efforts to correct and eliminate the sexually non-normative behaviour of others as a representation of visibility and acceptability politics and moral panics about queerness and sex in North America.
Socially Inappropriate Motherhood: Cross-Cultural Approaches to Sexual Violence-Related Pregnancies (SVRP)
Canadian Journal of Undergraduate Research (CJUR)
Issue 7, 2022
This review seeks to examine the relationship between state and community understandings of appropriate motherhood, sexual violence, and gendered perceptions of “good” or socially supported motherhood. SVRP represents an intersection between stigmatization, social support, and criminality in conversations of reproductive health and decision-making, which will be demonstrated using abortion laws as a cross-cultural lens.
"I'm a Homosexual!": Binary Gender Division and Homonormativity in But I'm a Cheerleader (1999)
Semicolon Journal
Volume 9, Issue 1, 2021
Jamie Babbit's film But I'm A Cheerleader (1999) serves as an excellent example of how gendered subjects can be portrayed in ways that construct social and sexual dissidence through purposeful stereotype mobilization and dysfunction. This campy film can be framed as a piece of media which tactfully portrays social and sexual dissidence through subversive representations of heterosexuality within a lesbian-centred construction of sexuality.
“i wanna be your girlfriend” but, like, not in a lesbian way
Queer Toronto (QT) Literary Magazine
Issue 6, 2021
Would a lesbian by any other name smell as sweet? By taking up issues of linguistic avoidance, euphemistic language, and even feelings of contagion, this public-facing piece explores the social stigmatization of the identity label "lesbian" by examining linguistic trends emerging on social media and in popular culture.
Trisha Paytas and Sexual Subjecthood: A Thematic Analysis of the Construction of Dissidence on Social Media
Tulips Journal of Gender Studies
Winter issue, 2021
Media personality Trisha Paytas is an excellent example of how sexual agency can intersect with the construction of dissidence on this app. In this paper, I take particular interest in her use of TikTok to bring attention to her sex work by promoting her music video "Only Fan" (2020) thematically examining the comment section to explore public perceptions of sex work, consumable bodies, the abject, and the policing of sexuality on social media.
