I am broadly interested in understanding patterns of violence in democracies. In my dissertation, I focus on instances of restrictions on media freedom in Latin America. In many democracies, it is not uncommon to see cases where activists, journalists, or media outlets are targeted by state or non-state actors who want to impede the dissemination…

I am a doctoral candidate in the History Department, focusing on Gender and Latin America. My research interests are broad, but mostly concentrated on the history of suffrage in Brazil, the UN San Francisco Conference of 1945, and women’s movements in Latin America (1920s-1970s). My current research examines the rise of two right-wing political waves…

My dissertation, The Making of a Queer Caribbean Consciousness: The Influence of LGBTQ Activism on Anglophone Caribbean Literature (1974-2014), analyzes the relationship between Anglo-Caribbean writings and the legacies of the region’s LGBTQ activism. With a focus on Guyana and Jamaica, I examine grassroots activist histories and the literary and lyrical cultural productions that have influenced…

The purpose of this dissertation research is to study, analyze, compare, and document the current ethnobotanical (Carbono 1995) pedagogy and practices of Indigenous (Nasa) and Afro-indigenous peoples in Cauca on the Colombian Pacific Coast. The focus of this research is then on those practices and I study them using an intersectional (race-class-gender-sexuality) epistemology and analysis.…

‘Thanks to the award from CLACLS, I’ll be able to travel to Colombia in June 2018 to complete my field research. I am studying the return of cultural heritage objects to their “country of origin”, and more specifically the reasons why Latin American countries such as Mexico, Peru and Colombia engage in legal and ethical…