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) and especially Paraguay������������
• yerba mate & its Ilex cousins yaupon and guayusa that produce lovely stimulant beverages across the Americas & in your neighborhood cafe
• how to balance sustainable development + care for the environment in South America.

My first book Hydropolitics: The Itaipu Dam, Sovereignty, and the Engineering of Modern South America (Princeton University Press, 2019) is an in-depth look at the people and institutions connected with the Itaipu Dam, the world’s biggest producer of renewable energy. In it, I argue that the dam converts water into electricity and money to produce hydropolitics through its physical infrastructure, the financial liquidity of energy monies, and the international legal agreements managing transboundary water resources between Brazil and Paraguay, and their neighbors Argentina, Bolivia, and Uruguay.

My larger research agenda is on environment, nature, and society. As a cultural anthropologist, I'm particularly attentive to how energy and environmental impacts disproportionately affect marginalized communities. As a Latina (������������+������������) in the academy, I'm interested in theorizing from peripheral and interstitial spaces.

I'm the Bacca Foundation Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology with a secondary appointment at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University.