About

Welcome! I’m a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.

As a sociologist and legal scholar working at the intersection of gender, environmental justice, health, and conflict, I employ ethnographic and historical methods to dissect how large-scale inequalities impact domestic and intimate arenas of life, with a focus on reproduction, motherhood, and family dynamics.

In my dissertation and book project, High-Risk Motherhood: War, Toxicity, and Reproduction in Colombia, I explore the continuities between environmental degradation and armed conflict through the prism of motherhood experiences and reproductive decision-making. Based on a long-term ethnographic engagement and collaboration with women’s groups and local institutions in northern Colombia, I show how reproductive symptoms and decisions become critical sites where power—familial, environmental, state, rebel—is made and unmade.

My research has been generously supported and recognized by the American Council of Learned Societies/Mellon Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the American Sociological Association, the Latin American Studies Association, and the Center on Global Poverty at JHU, as well as by multiple university fellowships at UT Austin and other institutions. My articles have received eight best-paper awards from the American Sociological Association and the Society for the Study of Social Problems.

I’m also a human rights lawyer and have extensive experience working on cases related to gender-based violence, sexual and reproductive health, and sexual harassment. More recently, I have devoted my legal practice to advising grassroots organizations in Latin America on cases related to water pollution and access to health.