I am a doctoral candidate in the political science program. My dissertation research examines narco-messages, thousands of which have appeared throughout Mexico since 2006. These messages range from a few words scrawled on a scrap of cardboard left at a crime scene, to massive, printed banners hung from highway overpasses during rush hour traffic. During the spring and summer of 2018, I am based in Mexico City, where I am creating a database of narco-messages. To better understand how and why these messages appear, I am also interviewing people that interact with them, such as the journalists that report on the messages. Within the general context of high levels of violence in Mexico, narco-messages provide (usually very partisan) interpretations of specific acts of violence. By analyzing them, I hope to better understand how both perpetrators and victims understand the violence around them.

I applied for a CLACLS Summer Travel Fellowship with the intention of spending most of the summer completing field research for my dissertation. I planned to spend about one month in each of two cities in Mexico, interviewing journalists and others to flesh out some case studies in my study of communication practices of organized crime. Travel and field research became impossible as Covid-19 spread through the United States and Mexico. Instead, I used the fellowship support to hire an assistant to help me finish transcribing the interviews I had already conducted. Rather than continuing with data collection, I resolved to end my field research, and to focus instead on writing up my dissertation. I still hope to return to Mexico to undertake follow-up research, but I will do so as part of a future book project, rather than for my dissertation.