I was born and educated in the United States of America. I was awarded a BA (double major) in Anthropology and Political Science from the University of Houston, Texas. I was awarded a MA and PhD in Anthropology from the New School for Social Research in New York City.

My areas of expertise are Latin America, Political & Legal Anthropology, Political Ecology, Postcolonialism/Coloniality, Gender, Race. I have taught courses on politics, anthropology, sociology, and law at undergraduate and postgraduate levels at universities in the United States, Europe and the United Kingdom and has been awarded prestigious nationally and internationally competitive research grants and fellowships, including a Wenner-Gren Research Grant and a Fulbright Global Scholar Lecturing Fellowship.

I have researched, conducted fieldwork and written about Latin America for over a decade. My current research and publication profile involve the extensive engagement of primary historical archival and ethnographic data from Peru with anthropological, historical, and postcolonial social theory vis-à-vis discourse on women and the law. More specifically, my forthcoming book, Coloniality of the Law: Marriage, Race & Sexual Violence in Early Twentieth-Century Peruvians Courts, traces the history of racial sentiment as an index of power located in intellectual trajectories, the creation of penal codes and the legal practices central to state formation and consequential development of radical social inequalities throughout the twentieth-century.

Dovetailing on my previous work on Peruvian legal culture, my current research examines the exploitative extractive practices of mining in contemporary Peru titled Greening Conflict in Peru: Corporate Mining, Resistance & the Law. I argue that the rule of law is set take centre stage in Peru by throwing into relief not only the contested notion of ‘indigeneity’, but also the venues through which the law progenerates modes of resistance in Latin America.

Political Ecology, Green Economies, Water Governance, Extractivism, Indigenous Rights, Oral History

List by: Type | Date

• 2018-9, Seed Funding Award

     Bournemouth University, (£ 2,000 GBP)

• 2016-2017, Centre for Learning Excellence Teaching Fellow Grant

     Bournemouth University, (£ 3,000 GBP)

•  2007-2008, Fulbright CIES Teaching Fellowship  

     US Dept. of Education,  Masaryk University in Czech Republic ($25,000 USD)

•  2004, Holocaust Memorial Dissertation Fellowship

     New School for Social Research ($10,000 USD)

•  2003, JRE Everett Dissertation Fellowship

     New School for Social Research ($8,000 USD)

•  2000, Wenner-Gren Individual Dissertation Fieldwork Grant

     Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research ($20,000 USD)

•  1999, Summer Research Grant, Janey Program in Latin American Studies

     New School for Social Research ($2,500 USD)

• Economic and Social History, Tutor and Lecturer
• Latin America and Development in the 20^th Century, Lecturer
• The Globalized Economy, Tutor and Lecturer
• Business in the Global Economy, Tutor and Lecturer
• Inequalities in the Global Economy, Convener and Lecturer
• Colonialism, Capitalism and Environmental Movements since the 1960s, Convener and Lecturer