Research Statement
My work considers diplomacy and the environment in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands looking north from Mexico. Across my research projects, I argue that nature and environmental change have been crucial factors in U.S.-Mexico diplomacy—in transnational politics and business deals as well as in local contestations on the ground, from urban floodplains in El Paso and Ciudad Juárez to seemingly remote farms, forests, and mines in the Chihuahua-Sonora borderlands.
My research has been supported by the UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation , UC Berkeley's center for Global, International, and Area Studies (GIAS), and the Arizona Historical Society. I have conducted archival research in Mexico's national archives (AGN), Secretary of Foreign Relations (SRE), historical water archives (AHA), as well as the state archives of Chihuahua and Sonora.
Projects and Archival Research
Researching foreign corporations and colonies in Chihuahua in the Chihuahua Enterprise at the Archivo Histórico del Estado de Chihuahua.
Negotiating Nature: Diplomacy, Community, and Environment in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands
Dissertation project, University of California, Berkeley
‘By the River’s Violence’: Reconsidering the Chamizal Border Dispute
Journal article, Diplomatic History, forthcoming
The Rio Grande's wandering path through Ciudad Juárez and El Paso, showing its positions in 1852, 1889, 1899, and 1907. Produced by the International Boundary Commission for the Chamizal arbitration of 1911.
Map reproduction courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library.
Horne, Walter. Uncle Sam's Guests at Fort Bliss, TX, ca. 1914; courtesy of El Paso Public Library.