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ABOUT ME

I grew up in rural Northern California before attending Reed College in Portland, Oregon. I was the first in my family to go to college and benefited greatly from financial and other support received there. After graduating with a degree in international studies and economics, I was a junior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC, where I decided to focus on international development in my future studies. Towards that end, I served two years in Bolivia as a volunteer with the US Peace Corps. This experience was the foundation for my later academic work, and I continue to work with many of the people and places I encountered then. I went on to earn a Master's Degree in Applied Economics (Development Economics), and later a PhD in Development Sociology from Cornell University. I was a post-doctoral associate for several years after finishing my terminal degree, focusing on projects on rural resilience, and food security and sovereignty. I came to the University of New Mexico in 2015. My research agenda is diverse and interdisciplinary, with common threads of climate change, agrarian studies, food systems, and de-colonial theory and politics.

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RESEARCH INTERESTS

CURRENT PROJECTS

Agrarian Change & Peasant/Indigenous Livelihoods

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Climate Change and Resilience, Vulnerability and Adaptation

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Impact of Colonialism & Ongoing Colonialities of the Global Food System

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Rural Geography/Sociology & the Global Countryside

Climate Technology, Global Commodity, and Colonial Artifact: Quinoa and the Politics of the Global Food System

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