University of California, Santa Cruz

Faculty Member, Latin American & Latina/o Studies

Assistant Professor

About

My research explores how materially weak actors in the global system confront and sometimes defeat their materially powerful adversaries. Specifically, I study how Central American revolutionaries, both in their home countries and in the United States confronted U.S. foreign policy during the 1980s. I use the theoretical insight gained from studying this case to help understand Central Americans' present struggles, inform other cases of asymmetric conflict around the world, and shed light on the powerful role that ordinary people, even traditionally marginalized political actors, can play in resolving these types of conflicts. 
I employ both qualitative and quantitative methods and conceptualize my work as being about Contentious Politics (the use of non-institutionalized and often disruptive techniques by actors without or with limited access to formal mechanisms of political decision-making to make a political point or to change government policy) that occur at the intersection of International Relations, Latin American Studies, and Latino Politics.

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