I am a Ph.D. candidate seeking to connect the history of linguistics as a science and of notions of language diversity with religion and colonialism in early modern Latin America. My dissertation studies the political history of Jesuit missions and linguistic knowledge in the 17th and 18th centuries, with a particular interest in the Orinoco River basin, located in present-day Colombia and Venezuela. As part of this work, I am developing a digital database documenting the languages spoken in Colombia and Venezuela before the 19th century. 

My research has been generously supported by Fulbright US-Colombia/Pasaporte a la Ciencia, John Carter Brown Library, Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory, Casa de Velásquez, The Huntington Library, The Bancroft Library, St. Louis University, and The Leibniz Institute of European History.

I am also a public historian working for the last six years with the non-profit foundation Neogranadina on community engagement projects and archival digital preservation in Latin America, particularly in Colombia and Perú. At UCSB, I collaborate and participate in digital initiatives for egalitarian archival practices at the Archives, Memory, and Preservation Lab (AMPL).

Unraveling the Orinoco’s 'Labyrinth of Languages': Linguistic Knowledge and Jesuit Missions in the Margins of the Spanish Empire, 1660-1784

Most Recent Publication (Encyclopedia Entry)

“Games and gambling.” In: Historical Dictionary of Canon Law in Hispanic America and the Philippines, 16th and 18th century (DCH), Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. Research Paper Series, April 2025 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5219276 

INSTRUCTOR OF RECORD:

  • HIST156A: History of Mexico: Pre-Hispanic and Colonial Periods, Summer 2023

GRADUATE TEACHING ASSISTANT: 

  • ENGR 101: Engineering Ethics, Fall 2022, Winter 2023
  • HIST121A: Renaissance Italy, Summer 2022
  • HIST8: Introduction to the History of Latin America, Winter 2020, Spring 2020, Spring 2021, Winter 2022, Spring 2022
  • HIST2A: World History, the Ancient World, Fall 2021
  • HIST2C: World History, c. 1800-present, Winter 2021
  • HIST2B: World History, c. 1000-1700, Fall 2020
  • HIST56: Introduction to the History of Mexico, Fall 2019