Bio


Before beginning my PhD studies, I spent nearly a decade working in K-12 education with a focus on consulting/tutoring for special needs students and their families, people ranging from the ultra-wealthy to the undocumented, work which shapes my approach to both teaching and research. For the last two years of my doctoral program, I was a Graduate Teaching Fellow at Stanford’s Center for Comparative Studies of Race and Ethnicity. I earned my PhD from the Department of Anthropology at Stanford in June 2022.

Academic Appointments


  • Lecturer, Stanford Introductory Studies - Civic, Liberal, and Global Education

Current Research and Scholarly Interests


My research on the environmental politics of hydrocarbon extraction in Ecuador focused on the relationship between Indigenous people and leftist national government committed to environmental protection, multiculturalism, and hydrocarbon extraction. In work on the Colombian llanos, I address the environmental politics of people who identify as farmers and hydrocarbon industry employees in a region marked not only by civil conflict but also by colonial and developmental imaginaries of the state.

That Latin American research was foundational my dissertation fieldwork based in the small town of Tioga in northwestern North Dakota’s Bakken region, characterized by farmland fracking. Social and ecological uncertainties are inherent to this juxtaposition of extraction and agriculture, which is maintained by landowners, officials, scientists, and industry personnel. My book project analyzes the environmental politics of fracking and their implications in a number of socioecological issues far beyond rural, conservative, and pro-oil North Dakota.

All Publications