A wide highland milpa field in full growth under a dramatic sky with cumulus clouds, Puebla–Tlaxcala Valley

Environmental Anthropology · Agroecology · Mexico and Latin America

Making milpa, experiential learning, participatory research

I am an environmental anthropologist, agroecologist, and educator whose work examines relationships among food, agriculture, environmental knowledge, and multispecies life in Mexico and Latin America. Through ethnographic research and field-based teaching, I explore how campesino and Indigenous communities cultivate, gather, sustain, and share knowledge through changing agrarian landscapes.

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Research · Teaching · Collaboration

Native maize varieties arranged for a community knowledge exchange under a palapa

Making Milpa

I approach the milpa as a diverse working landscape composed of maize, beans, squash, foraged plants, fungi, insects, soils, and the people who cultivate and gather among them. My research examines how knowledge, reciprocity, labor, and biodiversity take shape through these relationships.

Students and community members gathered around a fire during a field learning session

Experiential Learning

My teaching connects critical scholarship with field-based and experiential learning across environmental anthropology, agroecology, and food systems. I encourage students to develop questions through direct observation, collaborative inquiry, and reflection on the places and communities with which they work.

A family walking together along the edge of a milpa

Participatory Research

My ethnographic and participatory research is situated in the milpa agroecosystems of Mexico, the Bolivian Andes, and Chile's Chiloé Archipelago. Across these settings, I have worked alongside campesino and Indigenous families to understand agricultural knowledge, food sovereignty, agrobiodiversity, and environmental change.

Doctoral research

Reassembling the Milpa

My doctoral research examines multispecies entanglements surrounding chapulines, quelites, and cuitlacoche in the Puebla–Tlaxcala Valley, asking how knowledge, labor, ecological memory, and agrarian change emerge through everyday relationships.

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Intergenerational learning along the edge of a milpa

Fieldwork

A campesino presents varieties of maize criollo on a table under a palapa to a gathered group of students and community members — a knowledge-sharing session on native seed diversity in the Puebla–Tlaxcala Valley

Terraced milpa plots extend across a hillside, showing the scale and topography of smallholder cultivation in the Puebla–Tlaxcala Valley

Students and community members sit in a circle around a fire in a highland pine forest, listening to a knowledge-holder during an outdoor field session on ecological practices

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A person walks through a dry cornfield at harvest time, red jacket visible among the dry stalks.

Recent field notes

Mexico

Puebla–Tlaxcala Valley

My doctoral fieldwork examines the multispecies relationships surrounding foraged foods in milpa agroecosystems. The research focuses on chapulines, quelites, and cuitlacoche, attending to the ways cultivators engage with plants, insects, fungi, crops, and agricultural landscapes.

Read the field notes

Teaching

My teaching is rooted in an inclusive, dynamic, and experiential learning environment that inspires critical engagement with environmental anthropology, agroecology, sustainability, and biocultural diversity. Drawing from my interdisciplinary background and extensive field experience across Latin America, Europe, and North America, I cultivate a space where intellectual curiosity thrives, students develop agency, and learning extends beyond the classroom through direct experience, reflection, and cross-cultural engagement.

Teaching philosophy and courses

Experiential learning

Critical inquiry

Agroecology

Research, teaching, and collaboration

For academic opportunities, invited talks, and collaborative projects.

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