Nikki is a second year doctoral student in the Anthropology at the University of Oregon. She is interested in the ways in which human beings interact with, and experience wilderness. Current research aims to investigate spiritual pilgrimage on the John Muir Trail in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. She is also working on a concurrent Masters in Folklore. Her Folklore thesis will explore the ways in which wilderness has been constructed as a masculine space and how women forge their own identites in the wild. 

 

Her Master's thesis in Anthropology explored the Los Angeles Wisdom Tree, a site of secular pilgrimage. Hikers created an imagined community connected through the material objects deposited in a 'wish box' at the base of the tree. Past research also includes a project on community building in improvisational comedy and a case study of representation of gender in American Horror Story: Murder House. 

 

She also served as a graduate research assistant on a projects investigating student retention of men of color at CSU Northridge and is currently workng on a project investigating the social and structural effects of bilingual education on students. Broadly, Nikki is interested in folklore, community, non-religious spirituality, nature, gender and performance.