About Me
I am an environmental historian of Latin America, with expertise in history of frontier zones, indigenous history, and oral history in the Andes-Amazon region in the Americas. Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Rhode Island, where I teach Latin American History classes. I am also collaborating as the PI for The Alcantara Project, looking at indigenous stakeholders in the underwater cultural heritage of the Iberian peninsula.
I earned a PhD in History, an MA in History, and an MA in Anthropology from the University of Kansas, as well as a BA in Sociology from the Pontifícia Universidad Católica del Perú. From 2018-2020 I taught the Transatlantic Hispanic Cultures class as a lecturer in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Kansas. In the fall of 2021 I was granted a fellowship at the John Carter Brown Library to work on my book project.
My research looks at the environmental history of the montaña region, one of the classic transition zones in modern history of Latin America located between the high Andes and lowland Amazonia. While this mountainous, forested region stretches from Bolivia to Venezuela, I focus specifically on the area located in the northern part of the Peruvian Amazon.
I explore the entangled relationships with the region’s unique ecological conditions between indigenous peoples and colonial authorities from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century. I am interested in writing an environmental history that pays attention to the relationships between human beings and nature by emphasizing the role of indigenous populations.