I research the articulation of race, nature and migrations across the Américas. 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 Tacoma's Tideflats in radical placemaking for abolition geographies on Indigenous Puyallup land. 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. I also serve on the Committee for Annual Honors of the AAG (elected as of July 1, 2021).


​Green Wars

Green Wars critiques the criminalization of Indigenous land defenders in settler colonial Guatemala and calls for a material decolonization building from Q'eqchi' Maya territoriality. Published in English by UC Press and Spanish by AVANCSO.

Presentación del libro, Guerras Verdes, con Clara Arenas, Gio B’atz’, Jovita Tzul Tzul y Héctor Asig; Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala (AVANCSO). Guatemala City, Guatemala, March 4, 2020: https://www.facebook.com/Avancso.Guatemala/videos/2379218365558063/

Winner, 2019 Cultural and Political Ecology (CAPE) Outstanding Publication Award, American Association of Geographers.
Picture"Illegal, for-profit, every day" (Mural by David Long, Tacoma, WA)



​Abolition Geographies

My current research seeks to understand what abolition geographies mean in practice -- a Tacoma without a detention center? a Seattle without a police department? All too often, seeking to end violence ends up relying on hierarchies of oppression, the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC), and charismatic leadership. Instead, I seek to think about radical place-making that is centered on relationships of solidarity rather than individualism, an abolition that means that no person --and no land --  is disposable, and building solidarities across different communities on the same place.



​Transnational Latinidades

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