Researching the complex relationship between globalization, social movements, and new digital media. Questions I have addressed include: How do activists build social movement networks that are locally rooted, yet globally coordinated? What are the connections between new technologies and emerging forms of organization? What are the links between street protest and transnational networking?

Investigating the performative dimension of direct action protests—or the ways activists use their bodies to not only occupy space and challenge authority but also to make their struggles visible and convey particular cultural-political meanings and identities.

Ongoing, collaborative fieldwork on the World, European, and U.S. Social Forums—a series of global and regional spaces of encounter among grassroots social movements that arose with the anti-corporate globalization movement, with a particular focus on the potential and challenges of participatory democracy in relation to dynamics of inclusion and exclusion along axes of race, class, and gender.

What are the generational dynamics of contemporary protest, particularly in relation to the global justice and Occupy movements. To what extent can these struggles be considered youth movements?

Developing a model of politically committed ethnographic research that uses engaged ethnography as a way to contribute to movement goals while using my embedded ethnographic position to generate knowledge of movement practices and dynamics.

Exploring the relationship between grassroots media activism and autonomy among free radio activists in Mexico City and their links to alternative media projects and movements for autonomy around Mexico and the world.