About

I speak, study, and write about culture + politics. I focus on three main topics: Latin America, water, and the environment. But I also write about cuisine, popular culture, and development.

These days, I’m working on:

• energy infrastructure, renewable energy, and energy integration in South America (hydropower),
• how U.S. evangelicals “care for creation” and respond to environmental devastation as an act of faith,
• and yerba mate, a stimulating beverage that’s just showed up at your local cafe.

My larger research agenda is on environmental ethics amidst the constraints of the Anthropocene and how groups imagine and then act out their relationships to nature. As a cultural anthropologist, I’m particularly interested in how energy and environmental impacts disproportionately affect marginalized communities.

I’m an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology with a secondary appointment as Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at Duke University.