I am an urban historian specializing in Mexico and Latin America. My research explores cities as arenas for politics, governance, and migration. My first book, The Politics of Informality: Housing and Planning in Mexico City (University of Texas Press, 2026), charts how twentieth-century elites construed urban informality as a problem while utilizing the law and the gray areas beyond it as tools for governance. My work is increasingly transnational, centering on cities as nodes in the global circulation of peoples and ideas. I am currently working on a book that focuses on twentieth-century regional and international migrations in Mexico, the United States, and the Caribbean through the lens of anthropology, sociology, and other social sciences.
At Trinity, I teach courses on Latin American history, Mexican history, and urban history.
I was raised in Mexico City, where I earned a B.A. in International Relations from El Colegio de México. I received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago. Before joining Trinity, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San Diego.
Education
- Ph.D. in History from the University of Chicago
- B.A. in International Relations from El Colegio de México
Selected Publications
- The Politics of Informality: Housing and Planning in Mexico City. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2026.
- “Four Regimes of Informality: Legal Practices and Revolutionary Politics in 20th-Century Mexico City.” In Informal Cities: History, Power, and Precarity in Latin Europe, Latin America, and Colonial North Africa, edited by Brodwyn Fischer and Charlotte Vorms. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2025 (co-authored with Antonio Azuela).
- “The ‘Latin American City’? The Rise and Fall of a Figment of the Social Imagination.” Latin American Research Review 60, no. 3 (2025): 733-743.
- “Mexico City as an Urban Laboratory: Oscar Lewis, the ‘Culture of Poverty,’ and the Transnational History of the Slum.” Journal of Urban History 45, no. 4 (2019): 813-30.
Subjects Taught
- City & Citizenship in Latin American History
- Latin American Cultural Tradition
- Modern Mexico
- American Migrant Cities
- Urban History Seminar
Teaching and Expertise
- Mexican History
- Latin American History
- Urban History
Honors & Awards
- Award for Distinguished Early Career Faculty Teaching & Research (Trinity University)
- Postdoctoral Fellowship, International Institute (UCSD)
- Predoctoral Fellow, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies (UCSD)
- Mellon Dissertation Fellowship
- Teixidor Fellowship (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México)