Photo by frank mckenna | Unsplash
I am a human geographer who works on abolition, Latinx geographies and environmental justice. I share my research in English and Spanish through books, zines, documentary and podcasts. My current collaborations include co-editing a Focus Section on the politics of knowledge production in The Professional Geographer with Guillermo Douglass-Jaimes and Chris Keeve; and producing “From the Inside Out,” a podcast hosted by Ralph Dunuan with CHOICES Media.
In 2024, I joined UC San Diego as an Associate Professor of Designing Just Futures in the Communication Department. I continue to work with amazing graduate students at UW Geography, where I worked from 2014-2024.
Research
My research is animated by radical placemaking and practices of solidarity across difference. My book, Green Wars (2017) / Guerras Verdes (2020), exposed the role of international conservation in criminalizing Indigenous land defenders and called for land repatriation from Guatemalan protected areas to Q’eqchi’ Maya Indigenous people. My research methods have included archival research of community records and planning documents, community surveys, participant observation and institutional ethnographies to investigate the workings of unequal power relations. I serve on the editorial/advisory boards of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography; Environment and Planning D: Society and Space; and The Professional Geographer.
Teaching
Human geography challenges us to think about the relationship between people and place. My courses examine racialization as a central principle to how we make our society through where we live, where we work, and where we play. In the US, this means grappling with segregation – not a short history of Jim Crow laws, but a set of practices and policies that are the spatialization of white supremacy in our daily lives. I hope that my classes can be a space where students move from abolition as a hashtag to a set of consensus-based community practices to address harms and keep each other safe.
In 2025-2026, I will teach Race, Nature & Power (Fall); and Environmental Justice (COMM65) and a graduate seminar (COGR262) in Spring.