Research Overview

My research examines how value, expertise, and inequality are produced across institutions, knowledge systems, and public life. Bringing together cultural sociology, sociology of knowledge, feminist theory, and the sociology of inequalities, I study how evaluative cultures shape symbolic boundaries of recognition and exclusion, and how these boundaries are translated through institutions into more durable social boundaries.

Across my work, I have focused on three connected areas: knowledge production and academic gatekeeping; expertise, gender, and cultural politics; and emotions, intimacy, and public life. These projects examine how symbolic and social boundaries shape whose knowledge counts, whose experiences become visible, and how social worth is recognized, ranked, marginalized, or excluded.

Background artwork by Derrick Mosley, used with permission.

  • My recent research investigates how value, excellence, and diversity are defined and negotiated in European research institutions. As Principal Investigator of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship project Understanding the Role of Diversity in European Research (URDER, 2022–2024) at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, I studied how European Research Council experts conceptualize “excellence” and justify evaluative judgments in the selection of research.

    This work shows how ideals of excellence, neutrality, and merit can shape academic opportunities and recognition while obscuring the social and epistemic inequalities embedded in institutional evaluation.

  • In my work on cultural politics and gender, I analyze how expert knowledge is employed in state discourse and policy craft to navigate tensions around gender and reproduction, and to normalize shifts in social policy. In “Policy Expertise and Culture: The Case of ‘Civil Sexuality’” (International Review of Public Policy, 2021, with Anna Durnová), we introduced civil sexuality as a conceptual lens for analyzing how expert knowledge and cultural politics shape the governance of sexuality and reproduction.

    This line of research builds on my doctoral dissertation, Global Inspirations and Plastic Modesty: The Case of Intimacy and Composite Gender Arrangements in Iran (Masaryk University, 2021), which examined how global ideas and local practices shape intimate and gendered arrangements in everyday life. Together, these projects use sexuality and intimacy as analytic windows into broader struggles over knowledge, dignity, and social belonging.

  • I have also researched how emotions shape the boundaries between private life, public debate, and political judgment. In “Intimacy, Home, and Emotions in the Era of the Pandemic” (Sociology Compass, 2021, with Anna Durnová), we analyzed how the boundaries between home, intimacy, and public life shifted under COVID-19 restrictions, and how some emotions gained or lost legitimacy in public discourse.

    As a research fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, I also contributed to the CLIDE project (2020–2021), which investigated women’s healthcare choices and democratic self-determination. This work examined how emotions, dignity, vulnerability, and knowledge are negotiated in relation to health, care, and democratic life.