Ph.D. Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, University of California, Berkeley
M.S. Environmental Science, Policy, & Management, University of California, Berkeley
B.A. International Development and Environmental Studies, McGill University

I encourage students to analyze environmental problems from a number of different perspectives. This process often involves difficult, but necessary, conversations about the intersections of racial segregation, environmental degradation, and resource management policies in the United States and abroad.
My teaching on environmental justice seeks to change the way students approach environmental problems —viewing these issues as also tied to historically specific dynamics of capital, race, class, gender, and other axes of difference (some might call this a political ecology analysis).

My research and scholarship engage with questions of environmental justice, public wellbeing, equity, and access. As an example, in my book, Pineros: Latino Labor and the Changing Face of Forestry in the Pacific Northwest, provided a critical social history of a previously hidden group of forest workers in Southwestern Oregon’s Rogue Valley and made the structural plight of immigrant workers more central to debates over natural resource management on public lands, labor standards, and immigration policy in the United States. This research continues to inform policy and non-profit conversations on labor and natural resources.

I’m currently completing a book that explores the history of the first Superfund site in California, the Stringfellow Acid Pits, to better understand how places are produced in the context of invisible flows: of toxics, of groundwater, and less told stories of social mobilization. This work considers how institutions of expertise often exclude the experiences of those most exposed to harm and, despite deep and persistent uncertainties, authority figures have been called on to minimize concerns about hazardous substances, thus facilitating industrial, military, and economic expansion.