Degree(s)

BA Geography (with honours) (University of Chicago)

MA Geography (University of California, Los Angeles)

PhD Geography (University of California, Los Angeles)

Research interests

I am a cultural-historical geographer of modern and contemporary Latin America, namely the Southern Cone and Brazil. My scholarship has three objectives. First, I examine the history and geography of built environment interventions, asking why and how they were built, and what impact they have had at different scales. Second, I study the value of geographic knowledge to society. I ask why knowledge about places matters, and how that knowledge is best acquired and disseminated. Third, through extensive international field experience and command of French, Spanish, and Portuguese, I connect historical-geographical questions across world regions. Broadly, my work explores how, when, and where urban meets rural, domestic meets foreign, wealth meets poverty, and built meets natural. I am working on three book projects based on my fieldwork in Uruguay since 2014. These concern respectively the value of metaphors in teaching geographic knowledge, the impact of a national scale housing program (MEVIR) for the rural poor, and the spaces where Uruguayan soccer shapes national identity.

Teaching Interests

History of Geographic Thought; Geography of Latin America; Cultural-Historical Geography; Environmental History; Urban Geography

Awards and prizes

AAG Historical Geography Specialty Group Carville Earle Award (2023)

AAG Historical Geography Specialty Group Andrew Hill Clark Award (2023)

American Geographical Society Council Fellowship (2023)

Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant (2020)

Journal of Latin American Geography Field Study Award (2020)

Fulbright U.S. Student (2013)

Publications

“The Brazilian Scene: David Lowenthal, John Dos Passos, and the Importance of ‘Scene’ and Brazil to Geographic Inquiry”. Geographical Review. v. 113 n. 2 (February 2023), 171-190.

“The ‘Pastoral City-State’: A Metaphor for the Geography of Uruguay”. Journal of Latin American Geography. v. 21 n. 1 (May 2022), 125-159.

“Tunisia: An Arab Anomaly”. AAG Review of Books v. 9 n. 4 (October 2021), 35-38.

“Hindrances of the Hinterland: Ranching in Robert Wilcox’s Mato Grosso”. Historia Ambiental Latinoamericana y Caribeña (HALAC) v. 10 n. 3 (December 2020), 366-370. 

El País (Uruguay), “Túnez, un país espejo al otro lado del mundo” (November 2017)

Roads and Kingdoms, “The Raiders of Ruta 7” (July 2015)

IBWM, “A cast of characters: Why la Celeste stands unique” (February 2015)