Grateful to have joined TVO’s The Rundown to discuss the Cornell sexual assault case, the social media debate surrounding it, and the politics of publication bans.

I was especially glad to draw on my own research on media coverage of the St. Michael’s College School sexual assault scandal, where I examined how sexual violence is framed in public discourse.

The misogynistic backlash surrounding this case raises important questions about how women who report sexual violence are treated in the court of public opinion, particularly when their accounts challenge privileged young men.

Many thanks to the team at TVO for inviting me to join this conversation!

Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTiDNnyJkAc

Short-form video offers another way to bring sociological research into public conversation. I am serving as Digital Content Editor at Contexts, with work focused on presenting the magazine’s articles to wider audiences through social media videos.

This work grew out of my Sociologist in Session videos, which prompted an editor to approach me about producing videos for the magazine. It brings together my interests in sociology, writing, and public scholarship. Translating research for a short format involves making an argument accessible while preserving the social relationships and institutional conditions that give it meaning.

I had the pleasure of attending the premiere of TVO’s Stress Test at Hot Docs Cinema, where we watched two episodes of the new documentary series. I had filmed my contribution some time earlier and appear as an expert in the episode on masculinity.

The series follows actor and comedian Rodrigo Fernandez-Stoll as he explores the pressures of everyday life, including relationships and work-life balance. He speaks with experts and tries different approaches to managing stress, bringing research into conversation with his own experiences.

When you film a segment, you don’t yet know how the finished series will come together or what its overall message will be. Watching the episodes at the premiere, I was impressed by how much I learned, including ideas I could apply in my own life. Seeing what the team produced made me really happy to have been part of it.

The series is now available to watch. Watch the masculinity episode on TVO Docs’ YouTube channel.

My essay on looksmaxxing, co-authored with Jordan Foster, has been republished in French by Science & Vie. The French edition appeared on April 21, 2026, under the title “De la salle de sport à la mâchoire : ce que le « looksmaxxing » révèle sur la masculinité moderne.”

Originally published in The Conversation, the essay examines how young men’s faces and bodies become projects to measure, rank, and improve. We connect this pressure to broader uncertainty around work, housing, relationships, and masculine status, while examining the hierarchies and commercial interests that shape online beauty culture.

The republication makes this analysis available to French-speaking readers. You can read the French edition at Science & Vie or read more about the original essay and its other republications here.

New York Fashion Week’s glamour depends on labour that is often compensated with the promise of visibility. My visual sociology essay, “Paid in Exposure at New York Fashion Week,” appears in the August 2026 issue of Contexts, volume 25, issue 3, pages 55–63.

Working from inside the photographer’s pit, I examine how economic competition and masculine dominance shape who can claim space and pursue future opportunities. Exposure provides immediate value to the industry while leaving workers to absorb the uncertainty of whether that visibility will become paid work. The essay brings creative labour into focus by tracing how access, recognition, and compensation are distributed within an apparently abundant industry.

Explanations of violence can sound structural while leaving responsibility unclear. In my Sociology Compass article, published on August 6, 2025, I examine Canadian newspaper coverage of sexual violence at St. Michael’s College School in Toronto.

The article develops the concept of privilege diffusion: a process through which blame is spread across abstract forces such as culture or masculinity, obscuring the actions of privileged individuals and institutions. In this case, seemingly critical language could soften accountability by presenting perpetrators as products of their environment and the school as a passive setting. The analysis shows why naming structural forces must remain connected to the people, practices, and institutional decisions through which harm becomes possible.

Looksmaxxing turns faces and bodies into projects to measure, rank, and improve. In an article co-authored with Jordan Foster, published in The Conversation on March 19, 2026, we connect this pursuit to changing expectations of masculinity and the growing pressures of male beauty culture.

We examine how the body can become a seemingly controllable source of status when stable employment, home ownership, and long-term partnerships feel less attainable. The analysis also considers the racial and class hierarchies embedded in appearance rankings and the commercial interests that profit from insecurity.

The same essay was republished by The Tyee on March 24 and Katie Couric Media on April 15, 2026.

Online appearance advice can turn everyday insecurity into an escalating demand for bodily improvement. I joined Kyle Buchanan on feelgoodery for “The Dark Side of ‘Lookmaxing’ (And Why It’s Growing)”, released on May 7, 2026.

Our conversation examines looksmaxxing’s connections to incel culture, extreme beauty standards, and the pressures facing young men in an uncertain economy. We also discuss how algorithm-driven content can intensify comparison and encourage increasingly demanding forms of appearance optimization. These practices need to be understood in relation to the social expectations and online environments that make bodily change seem like a route to security, recognition, and control.

I am a 2026–2027 Connaught PhDs for Public Impact Fellow at the University of Toronto. The fellowship supports my public scholarship through Sociologist in Session, where I bring sociological research into conversations about gender, masculinity, and digital culture.

The project uses short-form video to examine how gender norms are produced, circulated, and contested. It connects research to questions about relationships, identity, and power, while preserving the complexity that can disappear in fast-moving online debates.

My project is profiled on the Connaught fellows page. The university announced the 2026–2027 recipients on June 16, 2026.