I am a rhetoric and writing studies scholar working on a disciplinary through-line between technical communication, computers and writing, and cultural rhetorics with a specific focus on queer health. As a researcher, I use qualitative research methods to conduct community-engaged participatory research on social media platforms.

In my dissertation, I develop an HIV/AIDS health literacy framework built from the rhetorical strategies that Black and Latinx queer, trans, and otherwise people use to make meaning of their sexual health on Twitter. I approach this work with a non-deficit focus on sexual health with specific attention to queer and trans Black, Latinx, and other communities of color. I argue that these specific communities typically have their knowledges discounted by providers and public health officials because of white supremacy and the legacies of colonial medical practices. For that reason, I use a cultural rhetorics-informed methodology to attune my work to the rhetorical-relational work of building and sharing community knowledge on social media platforms and prioritize and adapt community knowledges and needs.

Outside of academia, I am an organizer and community-engaged scholar, working from a genealogy of Latinx and Indigenous community organizing, queer health activism, and community-oriented technical communication and science writing scholarship. This work shows up in my organizing work with Queering Medicine, a grassroots coalition dedicated to queer health in Lansing, MI, which I co-founded and now has more than 20 members. Overall, my work demonstrates the manner by which I centralize community as acadeic and researcherly praxis.