I am a Postdoctoral Fellow with the Atkinson Center for Sustainability at the Department of Global Development and a Global Research Fellow at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies, Cornell University. My interdisciplinary background draws from a Ph.D. and M.A. in Geography from Clark University and a foundation in Sociology and Environmental Development from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP). My work mainly draws from and contributes to the political economy of socio-ecological relations, a field also known as political ecology. I also engage with development studies, critical resource geographies, and the political economy of development. 

My research explores how grassroots communities leverage their knowledge, governance, and visions to forge sustainable futures in environments profoundly affected by extraction. My doctoral dissertation examined this core question by analyzing the struggles over mining formalization in Peru and Colombia. Through multi-sited ethnography across the Southern Amazon and the Pacific Lowlands of Chocó, I expose the disputed meanings surrounding adequate mining practices, the severity of environmental damage, and socio-ecological adaptation within these aquatic ecosystems. To learn more, visit my research and publications pages.

I am currently leading a postdoctoral project that transitions my scholarly expertise to applied action-research in collaboration with the Shipibo-Conibo nation. We focus on the anthropogenic network of abandoned mining ponds—a challenging new aquatic environment that accounts for at least 30% of the deforested land in the Peruvian Southern Amazon. We aim to center Indigenous governance in all recovery and remediation initiatives. I have co-founded the Reparation Ecologies Working Group at Cornell to discuss similar efforts concerning what is left behind after extraction.

Several awards have supported my research, including the Melbourne Research Scholarship (University of Melbourne), Beca Andina (Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos), the Edna Bailey Sussman Fund Graduate Research Fellowship (with merit), the Cornell Atkinson Postdoctoral Fellowship, and intramural funds. In earlier work, I explored the interplay between indigenous and water governance with the support of Biocuencas Research Grant (Conservation International), earning me the Water Culture National Award (Third Place).

I have been a Visiting Scholar at KU Leuven (Belgium) and Universidad de Los Andes (Colombia). I am an honorary researcher of the Program of Advanced Studies on Inequalities and Sustainable Development (PUCP & FU Berlin) and the Center for Mining and Sustainability Studies (Universidad del Pacífico, Peru), and a collaborator of the Shipibo-Conibo nation in Madre de Dios.

When I am not in the field or the classroom, you can find me hitting the road for another run, foraging shrooms, watching the Criterion Channel, or playing catch with Raymi—the most intrepid corgi shepherd.