I examine the environmental politics of hydrocarbon extraction sites in the Americas. My previous research on the Ecuadorian and Colombian oil and gas industries informs my dissertation project in North Dakota’s Bakken region. There, fracked oil and gas are produced in fields of wheat and other dryland crops. I study how and why the people who generate spaces of joint hydrocarbon production and agriculture—farmers and landowners, corporate executives and workers, scientists and government officials—practice environmental government and politics as a means of addressing uncertainty in those spaces.

I earned a BA and MFA in creative writing from Cal State Long Beach, and a BA in Latin American and Latino Studies from UC Santa Cruz. I am co-author of Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia (Palgrave Macmillan 2017).