I am a scholar, educator, artist, and activist with a Ph.D. in Visual Studies from the department of History of Art & Visual Culture at University of California, Santa Cruz (2020). I research the contemporary visual culture of social movements in the Americas with a special focus on Latin America/ Mexico. I am currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina.

My doctoral project, Visualizing Decolonial Democracy in the Oaxaca Commune, examines how art and other creative visual initiatives were mobilized by minoritized citizens in a grassroots social justice struggle aimed at giving political voice to women, Indigenous peoples, and the working poor in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. I argue that the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO), a coalition of over three hundred social and political organizations, marshaled visual culture to envision and develop a model of participatory politics based in Indigenous communal practices.

This research received support from a Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship (2017), a Visiting Fellowship from the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies (2017-18), and a Graduate Student Research Fellowship in Poverty, Inequality, and Democracy from the Blum Center for Global Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Development (2019), among others.

I have over twenty years of experience as an educator and have taught at all educational levels, from pre-K to adult continuing education.