Image: Salar de Uyuni, in Southwestern Bolivia
Research
My research explores diverse topics in food systems, rural development, and agrarian change. Long grounded in qualitative field work in the Andean region of South America, I increasingly take on collaborative, community engaged, and student-driven projects that explore the agri-food system and human-environment relations here in New Mexico and beyond. My work focuses on the vitality of agrarian spaces and the agency of regular people to negotiate the global agri-food system and make it a site of resilience, resistance, and regeneration.
A shared meal in Charazani, one of my field sites in Bolivia.
Current Projects
Oral Histories of Farming Along the Middle Rio Grande
This community-based, convergence curriculum, teaching and learning project collects and archives oral histories, and creates public-facing outputs to share this knowledge with the community.
Rural Transformation in Highland Ecuador: On Paramo and Pasture
This project builds on the Transect of the Americas research network, examining the political ecology of páramo loss, the community-based history of collective resource governance and communitarianism in the region, and perceptions of and adaptations to climate change.
Project outcomes
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"A Political Ecology of Páramo Loss," under review at Environment & Planning E: Nature & Space
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Historias de vida de la comuna Chumblín Sombraderas: la vida, la tierra y el páramo. A community-based history of collective resource management and community governance. This project received a Globally Engaged Graduate Student Research Award for Cassidy Tawse-Garcia.
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Farmer's perceptions and strategies for their adaptation to climate variability in high Andean ecosystems. An MS thesis in Hydrology completed at the University of Cuenca.
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This project received funding from: Latin American and Iberian Institute at UNM and NSF grant #1826709
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From Colonial Castaway to Climate Cure-All: Quinoa's Lessons forRebuilding our Food System in the Face of Climate Crisis
This is a long-term labor of love; I began my career with fieldwork in quinoa producing villages in highland Bolivia, and have since followed quinoa around the globe. My current book project argues that climate disruption necessarily requires a reconstruction of our global food system, and quinoa's history holds important lessons for how this rethinking might center social and ecological justice.
Some of my previous publications about quinoa:​
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"Theorizing Reciprocity: Andean Cooperation and the Reproduction of Community in Highland Bolivia"
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"Negotiating Hybridity in Highland Bolivia: Moral Economy and the Expanding Market for Quinoa"
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This project received funding from: ADVANCE at UNM
Some Additional Recent Publications
