I am a cultural anthropologist who specializes in environmental anthropology.  My interests include political ecology, ethnoecology, globalization, and social theory.

My current research focuses on the global production, consumption, and management of Honduras Mahogany (swietenia macrophylla). From forest plantations to the materiality of guitar making and playing.

I am also engaged in a study about Mayan perceptions of climate change and how their traditional ecological knowledge adapts to address such changes particularly in their agricultural practices.

My research in general focuses the ways that people engage, perceive, and create meanings and knowledge about the environment and how that engagement is influenced by wider networks of power relations.  Based on extensive field research in Quintana Roo, Mexico, I have studied the conflicts over the management of resources on a Biosphere Reserve between the Maasewal Maya, local NGO’s, and the State.  A manuscript detailing this research titled “Entangled Conservation: Decolonizing Nature in the Maya Forest” is under review. 

I have also conducted research on community management of forests and the transformations of forest landscape in Puerto Rico.  The book “La Transformación del Paisaje Puertorriqueño y la Disciplina del Cuerpo Civil de Conservación 1933-1942” (The Transformation of Puerto Rican Landscape and the Discipline of the Civilian Conservation Corps 1933-1942, co-authored with Manuel Valdés-Pizzini and Michael González Cruz) has been published by the University of Puerto Rico (2011).