I am an Assistant Professor in anthropology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. Drawing on a mixture of ethnographic and archival methods, my research in the Brazilian Amazon examines how extractive economies shape environmental policy and day-to-day civic engagement. I’m particularly interested in the global agribusiness sector and its impact on small farmers and traditional resource managers. I am also increasingly interested in comparative histories of colonialism in the Americas and their implications for Indigenous territorial, land, and resource rights. I hold a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis and an undergraduate degree from William & Mary. My research has received support from the National Science Foundation, US-Brazil Fulbright Commission, Wenner-Gren Foundation, and Beinecke Foundation.

A few of my recent publications include: “Soy Power” a Review of Seeds of Power and The Government of Beans (Nature Plants), “The struggle for health: medical brokerage and the power of care in Brazil’s Amazon estuary” (Cultural Anthropology), “Merchants of the north: infrastructure and indebtedness along Brazil’s Amazon estuary” (Economic Anthropology), and “Transnational grain trade threatens Brazil’s Amazon” (NACLA Report on the Americas, in English and Portuguese). My book manuscript is provisionally titled The Forest and the Factory: Debt, Development, and Community in the Brazilian Amazon.