My interests include but are not limited to barriers and approaches to diversity, social cohesion, intersectionality, representation, respecting differences and making diversity work, and intercultural communication.
I currently try to answer to the questions of what happens when people from different cultures have contact for an extended period of time? How do people change, and why?
To answer these questions, I examine members of different cultural groups in interaction with each other over time, interacting across different domains, such as social, cultural, structural, and psychological.
How differences between members of different cultural groups are initially negotiated in one domain can influence the degree to which change happens later in the same or another domain. For instance, how differences in language abilities are negotiated can influence contact between members of different groups at a later point. Similarly, such contact can influence future language abilities. Improved language abilities can, in turn, improve educational achievement and future involvement in the labor market.
However, we are currently limited in our capacity to understand interdependent and long-term change that happens when different cultures meet (aka acculturation). This is largely due to the way in which acculturation is currently studied.
Consequently, we still lack a plausible theory that explains the mechanisms of acculturation, how it emerges within and across different domains, and how it varies between and co-evolves in the members of minority and majority groups.
I use a complex dynamical systems approach to acculturation in order to theorise about its mechanisms, and to understand:
1) how we can reach social cohesion in culturally plural systems, and
2) its implications in mitigating the negative health outcomes of acculturative stress, namely the physical and psychological difficulties in adapting to a different culture.