Emma entered the History PhD program in the fall of 2020. Her research interests include urban and environmental history, carceral studies, racial capitalism, and the history and culture of neoliberalism. She is particularly interested in engaging critical geography, political theory, and the environmental humanities to explore the role of architecture and the built environment in aiding and abetting forms of violence and social control. In addition to her graduate studies, she also works with the Logische Phantasie Lab as a researcher on their investigation of the legal and political (ab)uses of the US RICO Act. 

Prior to graduate school, Emma worked at the Wylie Agency in New York and with the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based journalism non-profit that documents the pattern and practice of police abuse, including the history of torture, in that city.  She graduated with honors from the University of Chicago in 2017 with a BA in History and minors in philosophy and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.