About Me:
My work focuses on the human consequences of structural and systemic violence and inequality. My areas of specialty are urban poverty and policy issues in the U.S. related to destitution, homelessness and substance abuse, health, welfare and criminal justice. My applied work includes policy-related research and writing in these areas. I am currently working on two research projects: an intimate ethnography of my own father, and a classic ethnography of Polish-Christian immigrants from northeastern Poland now living in New York. With a focus on the socio-cultural, political-economic and psychological aspects of displacement, diaspora and structural violence, these studies shed light on systemic processes of history, the legacies of culture, and the workings of memory. They also provide insight on the processes and aftermaths of genocidal violence, ethnic and religious tension, survival, adaptation, remembering, cultural trauma and identity formation, issues of enormous importance today, as we struggle in a world marked by the shadows of war and genocide.
Area(s) of Training
anthropology, applied anthropology, cultural anthropology, ethnography, medical anthropology
Area(s) of Expertise
Urban Ethnography; Multiculturalism, Race & Ethnicity; Poverty and Homelessness; Diasporic Communities
Current Area of Employment
Professor of Anthropology, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY
