I am an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lafayette College. As a historical and political anthropologist, my research focuses on processes of state formation, nation-building, and the aesthetic dimension of politics in post-revolutionary and contemporary Mexico. Trained in anthropology and archaeology  in Mexico, I earned my bachelor’s degree from the Universidad de las Américas Puebla in 2005. In 2006, I received a Fulbright grant to pursue graduate studies in the United States, where I completed a master’s degree in Museum Studies at New York University in 2008 and a Ph.D. in Anthropology, with concentrations in Latin American Studies and Archaeological Anthropology, at Cornell University in 2015. Before joining Lafayette College, I held a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in 2016.

My academic work has been published in journals such as Hispanic American Historical Review, The Journal of Latin American Studies, Environment and Planning, and the Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, among others. I have received several awards, including an Honorable Mention for the Humanities Essay Prize from the Mexico Section of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA), the Best Article Award from the Energy and Environment Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG), an Honorable Mention for the Social Sciences Essay Prize from the Mexico Section of LASA, and the Roseberry-Nash Award from the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology (SLACA).

My first book, Visible Ruins: The Politics of Perception and the Legacies of Mexico’s Revolution, was recently published by the University of Texas Press (2024). I am currently working on a new project that examines the history and practice of physical forensic anthropology in Mexico.