Research & Writing
Research & Writing
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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 were 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 American Historical Association, the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), the Bancroft Library, the Huntington, UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, UC Berkeley's Center for Global, International, and Area Studies (GIAS), the Arizona Historical Society, and Brigham Young University's Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. I have conducted archival research in archives in both Mexico and the United States, including Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Relations archives (SRE, Mexico City), historical water archives (AHA, Mexico City), the state archives of Chihuahua and Sonora, the LDS Church History Library (Salt Lake City, Utah), and the U.S. National Archives in Washington, DC and College Park, MD.
"Fixing the Rio Grande at the U.S.-Mexico Border"
"Fixing the Rio Grande at the U.S.-Mexico Border"
in Rivers on the Move: Waterways in Human Life from the Ice Age to the Anthropocene, ed. Bathsheba Demuth, Mark Healey, Giacomo Parrinello, and Laurence C. Smith, Duke University Press (forthcoming, 2027).
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"
"Negotiating Nature: Diplomacy, Community, and Environment in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands"
Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2025
*Winner of the 2026 Gunther Barth Dissertation Prize in History of the North American West (UC Berkeley)
My dissertation project examined transnational colonization projects and company towns in northern Mexico through the lens of environmental history, with a focus on land, water, and community. I explored how immigrants arriving from the U.S. West contributed to the Mexican government’s colonization goals in the country’s northern border region through three case studies: Mormon flight from prosecution for polygamy and ambitions of extending an “axis of dominion” into Mexico; entrepreneur William Cornell Greene’s vision for an integrated copper mining, ranching, timber, and railroad empire; and Kickapoo communities’ search for sovereignty in Mexico on the eve of Oklahoma statehood.
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.
"‘Beyond the River’s Violence’: Reconsidering the Chamizal Border Dispute"
"‘Beyond the River’s Violence’: Reconsidering the Chamizal Border Dispute"
*Winner of the Stuart L. Bernath Scholarly Article Prize (2024) for best article on U.S. foreign relations by an early-career scholar
Horne, Walter. Uncle Sam's Guests at Fort Bliss, TX, ca. 1914; courtesy of El Paso Public Library.
"Photographing the Border: The Politics of Visual Culture, Identity, and Violence During the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920"
"Photographing the Border: The Politics of Visual Culture, Identity, and Violence During the Mexican Revolution, 1910-1920"
Undergraduate honors thesis, Davidson College, 2018
Undergraduate honors thesis, Davidson College, 2018
Other Writing
Other Writing
Review of Olsson, Tore C., Red Dead's History: A Video Game, an Obsession, and America's Violent Past, in Teaching History: A Journal of Methods, 2025
Review of Rosier, Paul C., Environmental Justice in North America. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews, 2024
with Kevan Malone, “Conflict and Cooperation at the U.S.-Mexico Border: A Very Short History,” UC Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation blog, May 2023
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