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Biography

I grew up in Michigan and got my undergraduate degree there. Since then, I’ve lived and done research in many places, including Spain, Argentina, and Chile. Before coming to Western, I was based in Ithaca, New York, where I completed my graduate work. When I’m not here, I’m probably in Michigan, Colombia, or trying to get to my research sites in Argentina and Chile.

Education

• Ph D, Cornell University

Teaching Interests

My teaching revolves around Latin American history. I regularly teach colonial and modern Latin American history surveys. In those courses, we focus on the common history of Latin America and the struggles that have shaped its social development and its diverse cultures. We also emphasize listening to different historical ‘voices’ from Latin America through not just written documents, but also art, music, video, and film. I also teach courses on inter-American history, revolutionary Latin America, the history of capitalism, and wealth and power in Latin America.

Research Interests

My research interests involve the intersection of social history, historical geography, history of technology and environment, and political economy. My first book, <i>In Place of Mobility: Railroads, Rebels, and Migrants in an Argentine-Chilean Borderland </i>(under contract with University of North Carolina Press), examines the historical evolution of a borderland between Argentina and Chile in the mid-nineteenth century by focusing on the movement of people and things across those mountains in the context of political upheaval, technological change, and reorientations in the global economy. Broadly, this research allows individuals’ creation of lived geographies to inform how we understand global structural changes. This research has been supported generously by numerous institutions, including the Social Science Research Council and the Fulbright.<br><br>My second project sets out to explain how and why state makers (politicians, bureaucrats, and experts) in Latin America set and changed fiscal policy from the inception of nation-states in the early 1800s to the Great Depression. Within this broad history, I focus on three aspects of state finances. First, the changing practices of economic value during what can be thought of as the first era of global economic growth. Second, the ways in which state financial practices spatialized during the era of the rise of nation-states. Third, how people experienced and responded to these ever-changing financial geographies.