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Research

Research

An overview of research on communication, power, material conditions, and subject formation, with particular attention to rhetoric, critical theory, disability, and the public meanings of ADHD.

Research overview

Scholarship on how communication, power, and material conditions shape human life.

My research asks how communication and power shape everyday life. I study rhetoric, political economy, disability, technology, and social theory, with a focus on how institutions influence the way people understand themselves and the world around them.

The work is interdisciplinary, but the central concern is simple: how larger systems affect lived experience, and how those systems can be described clearly and critically.

Published in
  • Quarterly Journal of Speech
  • Philosophy & Rhetoric
  • Rhetoric Society Quarterly
  • Cultural Critique
  • Angelaki
Recurring themes

Major lines of inquiry that organize the research.

Rhetoric as Material Practice

I treat rhetoric as something that shapes institutions, habits, and public life, not just as language on a page.

Power and Subjectivity

I examine how social and institutional pressures shape identity, self-understanding, and everyday expectations.

Resistance and Alternative Futures

I also study how people and communities imagine different ways of living, organizing, and relating to one another.

ADHD research trajectory

A central research arc asks how ADHD becomes visible as a historical and public problem.

One of my central research projects asks how ADHD comes to be understood as a public and historical problem. That work began with an essay on my own diagnosis and grew into a broader study of ADHD as more than a medical label.

I look at how schools, work culture, medication, self-management, and productivity norms all shape the way ADHD is experienced and explained. The goal is to understand both the individual experience and the larger system around it.

Keynote and interdisciplinary resonance

This work has also led to invited speaking, including a plenary keynote at the Institute on Theology and Disability, where I expanded these questions into broader conversations about neurodivergence, community, and public meaning.

Current book project

Disabling the Deficit: The Social Conditions That Make ADHD Visible as a Public Problem

Alternative working title: The Neoliberal Biopolitics of ADHD.

I am developing this research into a book about the social conditions that make ADHD visible in particular ways. The project connects rhetoric, media, technology, education, and political economy.

At its core, the book asks why ADHD becomes a public problem in some moments and not others, and how its meaning changes across institutions, communities, and different social contexts.

Practical relevance

This research directly informs how I mentor students and approach ADHD coaching. It helps me see not only individual struggle, but also the systems that shape that struggle.