
I am a historian of the modern United States. My work focuses on cities, immigration, capitalism, and empire, with particular attention to Latino communities. I am especially interested in how everyday working people, migrants, and entrepreneurs shaped, and were shaped by, the political economy of urban America across the twentieth century.
My first book, Nueva York: Making the Modern City (under contract with Princeton University Press), is a history of New York City and its Latino residents from the Spanish-American War of 1898 through the late twentieth century. It shows how New York functioned simultaneously as a hub of U.S. empire and as a site remade by imperial and semi-imperial subjects; how Latino economic worlds—across labor and business—became embedded in and helped mold the city’s economy; and how these encounters gave rise to new and often contradictory forms of collective identity.
My scholarship has appeared in the Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, and the American Historical Review, as well as several edited volumes on racial capitalism, Latino history, and urban history. I have also published for public-facing venues like The Washington Post, Boston Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Public Books.
At Stanford, I teach courses on U.S. political and social history, urban history, and Latino studies. I am deeply committed to mentoring undergraduate students, including first-generation students, and I welcome graduate students whose research interests include the history of cities, migration, race, political economy, and the U.S. in a global frame.
Before joining the faculty, I was a Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. I received my Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University in 2019, where my dissertation won the Michael Katz Award for Best Dissertation from the Urban History Association and was a finalist for the Ralph Gabriel Henry Prize for Best Dissertation from the American Studies Association.