Born in Australia, I grew up in the Big Sky Country of Montana. I spent a bit over a decade training in classical ballet before turning my attention to the study of food and culture.

I wrote my honors thesis at the University of Oklahoma advised by Julia Ehrhardt on the language of the dieting industry, research that I presented at the 2012 annual meeting of the Association for the Study of Food and Society. I went on to study public health nutrition at UC Berkeley, where I also taught undergraduate nutrition courses, finding my true passion in teaching. After marrying my sweet husband (who’s a rock star physical therapist and athlete), I tried my hand at employee wellness, helping to launch Healthy Workforce at Kaiser Permanente.

I began the MLA in Gastronomy program at Boston University in fall 2011, while continuing to work with Healthy Workforce. My research interests tend to gather around representations of food and food-related phenomena in popular culture, as well as the connections between food studies, nutrition, and public health. My masters thesis, advised by Warren Belasco, analyzes the marketing of the three leading diet programs in the United States (Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and Jenny Craig) to men in the twenty-first century, exploring constructions of masculinity in an age of obesity.

I will conclude my Gastronomy studies at BU this summer and am eager to begin the American Studies Ph.D. program at Brown University in fall 2013.

As I continue my interdisciplinary studies of food, nutrition, and public health, this blog is a place for some of my finished work, as well as lots of projects that are in process or ideas that are just rumbling around in my mind. Please feel free to comment and engage! It’s okay to be critical, but please be kind.