bio

I am a Thai-American medical anthropologist, feminist ethnographer, and human lactation researcher. I am also an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant (IBCLC). My scholarly work is focused on the perinatal and postpartum period, with an emphasis on lactation and reproductive justice. Health equity, social justice, and human rights are unifying threads of my research, pedagogy, and practice.

I am an Associate Professor of the Practice at the Duke Global Health Institute in Durham, NC. Previously, I was a faculty member in the Department of Maternal and Child Health at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Gillings School of Global Public Health. There, I was an affiliate faculty of the Carolina Global Breastfeeding Institute, Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center, and co-lead of the Gillings Humanitarian Health Initiative. I am the 2021 recipient of the Gillings Faculty Award for Excellence in Health Equity Research and a two-time recipient of a Teaching Innovation Award for the Department of Maternal and Child Health (2020 & 2023). Prior to joining UNC Chapel Hill, I was a professor in Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Elon University and Director of the Program for Ethnographic Research and Community Studies (PERCS).

My global breastfeeding advocacy includes representing CGBI in the WHO/UNICEF Global Breastfeeding Collective, the Emergency Nutrition Network IFE Core Group, and the United States Breastfeeding Committee as Co-Steward of the COVID-19 Infant and Young Child Feeding Constellation. I was honored to represent the International Lactation Consultants Association as a liaison to the United Nations in 2017.

My research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), North Carolina Divison of Child Development and Early Education (DCDEE), American Association of University Women Pacific Fellowship, and a National Institutes of Heath Loan Repayment Award. My academic articles have appeared in Social Science & Medicine, Health Equity, American Journal of Human Biology, Journal of Human Lactation, Maternal and Child Nutrition, BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, Frontiers in Sociology, Breastfeeding Medicine, Journal of Immigrant and Minority Health, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, and Preventing Chronic Disease.

I earned a B.A. in Anthropology at the University of Louisville and both my M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. I completed postdoctoral fellowships in Social Network Methods at the Social and Behavioral Research Branch of the NIH-National Human Genome Research Institute and in Global Health at the Yale University, Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.

I am a co-editor of the book Breastfeeding: New Anthropological Perspectives, with Dr. Cecília Tomori and Dr. EA Quinn. I’m the founding creator of the Anthrolactology blog, and am a co-creator/co-host of the Anthrolactology podcast, along with Cecília and EA!