My research on human milk donation explores the emotional, cultural, and social meanings of breastfeeding and milk-sharing beyond the act of feeding. I examine how milk donation—particularly in informal, peer-to-peer contexts—functions as a deeply embodied form of caregiving, solidarity, and maternal connection. This work sheds light on how women navigate motherhood through acts of giving and receiving, often in the aftermath of trauma, loss, or disruption to expected paths of parenting.

I am especially interested in how human milk becomes a medium through which identity, ethics, and belonging are negotiated. For some, donating milk after stillbirth or in times of personal crisis becomes a ritual of remembrance and a way to reassert agency; for others, receiving donated milk represents trust, care, and inclusion in a maternal community.

My research also investigates the ways in which informal milk-sharing challenges dominant biomedical and institutional narratives around breastfeeding, and instead foregrounds alternative models of maternal solidarity, bodily autonomy, and relational ethics. Through ethnographic, autoethnographic, and visual methods, I aim to trace the symbolic and social trajectories of milk as both gift and message—circulating between mothers, shaping kinship, and redefining what it means to nourish.