Research

My research combines theories from psychological and medical anthropology that primarily draw on feminist philosophy, phenomenology, care ethics, theories of self and embodiment, and post-colonial studies.

By incorporating a person-centered sensibility into my research projects, my work addresses how the ambiguity of both narrativized and practiced commitments to caring for oneself and others speaks to the shifting nature of ethical life and the plasticity of larger social categories. In other words, my work attunes to how individuals understand and perform care, ethical commitments, and interrogate tacit assumptions about mental illness, feminism and womanhood, obligation, subordination, and authority.

I am committed to furthering contemporary discussions about the relationship between migration and mental and emotional unwellness in the Global South. My research offers insights into not only the function of psychiatric care in a resource-limited setting, but also timely and necessary conversations on migration, race and racialization, and injustices in the East African context.

In doing so, my work advocates a reimagining of domestic worker agency; that is, a socially just and impactful anthropology that centers Ethiopian women's knowledge and experience--adding layers to a standpoint of Afrocentric feminist epistemology.

By focusing on the complexities of circular migration in regions of the Global South, my work also brings much-needed attention to the murkiness of human rights-based practices and migrant worker policies emerging within Ethiopia and between Ethiopia and the Arab States of the Persian Gulf.