I am an assistant professor at Oregon State University and the associate editor of the US Latina and Latino Oral History Journal. Previously, I have been a Mellon Foundation Fellow in Latino Studies at the School for Advanced Research and a visiting assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso.

My research focuses on the greater U.S.-Mexico borderlands, the Southwest, the South, and the lands where these regions meet, the Southern Great Plains. My work engages several fields, including Mexican American, Native American, North American West, Great Plains, Nuevo South, borderlands, migration, labor, civil rights, and colonialism. Overall, my research and writing counters the depiction of Mexican people as only recent arrivals to the United States, making clear their long-term presence in the nation beyond the Southwest and placing them as an integral part of the American story.

My scholarship has also concentrated on women’s labor and organizing on the U.S.-Mexico border, African American and Mexican American social justice movements and their coalescing, historical memory, digital humanities, along with cultural ecology. Through the connections that a long-term approach reveals, I have brought, and continue bring, these various interests together.

My public humanities experience includes working and volunteering within publicly accessible oral history projects as well as preservation projects focused on harnessing historical assets for community-oriented development. My research has also been included within publications for the wider public and government agencies.