About
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). I previously earned my B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology, with minors in Black Studies and Latin American and Latino Studies, from Swarthmore College. I am also a Mellon Mays Fellow.
My research incorporates theoretical insights from sociology and Latinx Studies to explore racial formation, incorporation, and inequality among Latinx populations in the Americas. I take a comparative, multi-method approach to my research using ethnographic, demographic, and survey methods.
A central thread of my research engages the debate over the changing U.S. racial system and Latinxs' relative positioning within the American racial and socioeconomic landscape. For instance, my dissertation investigates the ways that generation and place shape racial formation among Puerto Ricans living in New York City and Orlando, Florida. This project draws on 58 in-depth interviews with Puerto Ricans and U.S. Census data to theorize about racial identification, ethnic boundary-making, and perspectives on racism and discrimination. I am attentive to the ways that Puerto Ricans often fall on the periphery of research on American racial formation and international migration due to Puerto Rico's status as a U.S. territory rather than a U.S. state or sovereign nation. I have received funding for this research from various sources, including the Social Science Research Council, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at CUNY-Hunter College, and UNC’s Institute of African American Research.
Another thread of my research focuses on the intergenerational and transnational effects of migration on return migrant families. I have published two peer-reviewed articles on U.S.-Mexico migration and intergenerational mobility in Demography and the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. An earlier version of my co-authored Demography paper on the relationship between parental migration and children’s educational outcomes in Mexico received UNC sociology’s 2018 Katharine Jocher Graduate Student Paper Award for the most outstanding scholarly manuscript by graduate students.
I identify as a teacher-scholar who is committed to producing intersectional and socially conscious scholarship on marginalized populations. I am the co-founder of the Workgroup for Intersectional, Testimonial, and Ancestral Research, an international network of junior scholars from a variety of disciplines committed to exploring new methods for producing socially engaged scholarship. I am also an inaugural member of UNC’s Critical Ethnic Studies Graduate Student Working Group.
