My research sits at the articulation of race, nature and migrations. In Guatemala, I have conducted research that resulted in the publication of Tierra, Migración y Vida en Petén (2012) and Green Wars (2017). In the US Pacific Northwest, I have examined the role of the Northwest Detention Center in immigrant rights. Thinking relationally across the US, Mexico and Guatemala, I am also researching and writing on transnational Latinidades.

I serve on the editorial/advisory boards of Antipode: A Radical Journal of Geography; Environment and Planning D: Society and Space; and The Professional Geographer.


​Green Wars

Green Wars critiques the criminalization of Indigenous land activists in settler colonial Guatemala and calls for a material decolonization building from Q'eqchi' Maya territoriality. 

Winner, 2019 Cultural and Political Ecology (CAPE) Outstanding Publication Award, American Association of Geographers.
Picture"Illegal, for-profit, every day" mural about the Northwest Detention Center



​Abolition Geographies

My current research seeks to understand what abolition geographies could look like in practice -- a Tacoma without a detention center? a Seattle without a police department?



​Transnational Latinidades

My research working with Q'eqchi' land activists challenged me to rethink my assumptions about a singular "Latinidad," or Latinx identity.