about me
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at New York University. Trained as both an anthropologist and environmental engineer, my work broadly traces the entanglements of political power, engineering, and the urban environment. I am specifically interested in how unjust environmental conditions are produced and sustained through engineering practices, and how they might be made otherwise.
My current book project, Sinking the Capital: Engineering and the Government of Disaster in Mexico, traces the history of anthropogenic land subsidence in Mexico City and engineers’ management of its most pernicious effect—flooding— from the end of the 19th century to the present. It reveals how engineering has become a crucial mode of governing the very disastrous conditions it produces, of maintaining social control even as environmental conditions degrade for the majority.
Articles based on my research in Mexico City have appeared in American Ethnologist, Antipode, and (in translation) in Desacatos. I have published shorter articles for the public in The Washington Post and Logic, among other outlets, which can be found here. I am also working with Mexican colleagues to create an online, interactive spatial documentary about flooding, Las Huellas del Agua / Watermarks, which draws on this project. I have been asked to speak about the water crisis in Mexico City for international media outlets like the BBC, NPR, France24, RFl, as well as Mexican news outlets like Milenio, Animal Político, Pie de Página, El Economista, Diario 24 Horas, Radio Centro, and La Octava. I spend much of my free time working with community organizations struggling for social and environmental justice.
I use he/him pronouns - and a recording of my last name’s pronunciation is below.
If you’d like to get in touch, please use the contact form below. Prospective PhD students, please read this first.