I've grappled with a sense of wanderlust since childhood, not just a desire to travel, but a restless need to see and experience the world differently. Though I hadn't really traveled until I was about eleven, I knew I needed to move, physically and philosophically, and learn beyond what was familiar. It was in eighth grade, on my first flight to New York, that I felt it in my core. I needed to think through places, stories, and ways of knowing.

 

I've always loved photography and storytelling. In elementary school, I won first place in a San Diego program called Reflections for a photograph I'd taken. In middle school, I filled journals with poetry. I wrote because I had to, I wanted to, and I told stories because they shaped how I understood the world in hopes folks could feel less alone, be intrigued, or reimagine possibilities, even as a younger writer.

 

Somehow, inevitably, I ended up in research as an extension of my storytelling and questioning. I earned a master's in sociology and a PhD in education, exploring knowledge production, epistemic boundaries, and who is included or excluded from meaning-making. Along the way, I lectured in sociology and education, and taught humanities at the height of COVID school closures, an experience that fundamentally reshaped how I see education and knowledge itself.

 

At my core, in all the things I do, I'm a writer. I want to write books like magical realism, speculative fiction, sci-fi, poetry, and nonfiction, stories that bend reality and invite us to imagine otherwise. My research tells stories that challenge dominant narratives, centering lived experiences as vital sources of knowledge. I believe research is about action, resisting the status quo, and questioning traditional ideas of knowledge production.

 

I also believe in humanizing pedagogy, that we are whole people, not just academics, students, or workers. This website reflects that philosophy. You'll find my research, teaching, and academic work alongside my artistic self, including me as the traveler, the photographer, the writer of fiction and poetry, and mom.

 

Wanderlust is not just about a deep love of travel, for me, but it's also about crossing boundaries of identity, culture, and knowledge. It's about questioning, unlearning, and reimagining, and it also incorporates an idea, in my approach, that storytelling can act as resistance and, in turn, research as a form of world-making and reimagination.

 

So, on that, Welcome to Wanderlust Narratives.