Hello!

I’m a developmental cognitive scientist studying how children think about social categories, like gender and race and how language and social structures shape that process.

I’m currently a postdoctoral fellow in developmental psychology at New York University, working with Marjorie Rhodes and funded by the National Science Foundation. I received by PhD in developmental psychology from Stanford University in 2024, working with Ellen Markman.

Social categories like gender and race structure much of our society, shaping who gets access to resources, opportunities, and power. Consider the gender wage gap or racial achievement gap, for example. What do children growing up in our society come to think about such social differences and disparities? And as children grow up, how do those ways of thinking contribute to maintaining such differences or disparities in the first place?

I’m interested in how language shapes children’s thinking about such matters. How might the way we talk sustain, recreate, or alter the social differences and disparities we describe?

I’m also interested in how children think about the role of social structures, since many of the social disparities I’m interested in are ultimately structural in nature. Although thinking about social structures can be challenging for children, and even adults, children are capable of such structural thinking at a young age. How can we harness children’s capacity for structural thinking for social good?

Other random interests of mine include social ontology, conceptual ethics, applied philosophy of language, pragmatics, and speech acts. Although psychology and cognitive science is my home turf, I love learning about perspectives on these issues from philosophy, linguistics, sociology, and beyond.