LERA 79th Annual Meeting
I presented “Is Ithaca Still a Union Town?”—research on worker power, local labor repertoires, and uneven regeneration in Tompkins County from 1984 to 2026.
See current academic workResearch Impact & Achievements
Transparent counts with conservative rounding. Updated 2026.
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$1.5M+Research grants contributed toContributions across 8 awards including NEH, National Park Service, and Doris Duke Foundation projects.
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200+Oral history interviews conductedCommunity based interviews across Florida, the Mississippi Delta, and Indigenous communities nationwide.
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175+Students taught at CornellThree sections across two semesters, with another graduate TA appointment upcoming.
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40+Student volunteers coordinatedOver three years as Assistant Director at the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program.
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1Peer reviewed publicationPlus several manuscripts under review and in revision.
Grant total reflects full award amounts for projects I contributed to and does not represent personal earnings.
Latest Updates
A few recent places where my doctoral research has been tested, sharpened, and placed in conversation with other scholars.
Johns Hopkins Racial Politics Summer Institute
Selected for an intensive graduate institute on racial politics, democratic backsliding, authoritarianism, and institutional power—with scholarship support for participation.
Follow the research trajectory
Field notes
Research in relationship.
My research begins with relationships. I learn alongside students, workers, organizers, and community partners—and I try to carry what they share with care. These moments offer a glimpse of the listening, learning, and collective work behind my scholarship.
Learning history where it lives
As Assistant Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, I helped lead week-long field programs in the Mississippi Delta. We prepared students to understand the history of the places we entered, listen with humility, and recognize community members as the experts on their own lives.
How I approach fieldwork: arrive prepared, listen carefully, and remain accountable after the interview ends.
Emmett Till and the landscape of memory
Visiting sites connected to Emmett Till helped us understand how memory lives in the landscape—and why confronting racial violence requires listening to the people who continue to carry that history.
Global Migration Spring School
At the Cornell–Queen Mary Global Migration Spring School, I learned with scholars working across disciplines and borders. Our time in Malta pushed me to think more carefully about how migration is experienced, governed, and contested.
Standing with immigrant families
At a No Kings Day gathering, I documented one small part of a much larger public struggle: immigrant workers, families, and allies standing together for dignity and belonging.
Knowledge as a shared resource
Working with Ana Ortiz, No Más Lágrimas, and local partners reminded me that useful research must also be accessible. Multilingual know-your-rights materials are one way knowledge can move back into the community.
Relationships that outlast a project
Labor history lives through people and the relationships they build. Working alongside community organizers has taught me that research matters most when it remains accountable to the people whose experiences give it meaning.
A note on these photographs: I share them as records of work done in relationship with others. The captions explain my role while honoring that the labor, histories, and experiences pictured belong to the communities themselves.
Inside the dissertation archive
Reading worker power through its own press.
My dissertation research follows how workers and community organizations in Tompkins County built collective capacity beyond the traditional union hall. The Working Press and The Workers’ Edge show how those groups explained workplace struggles, connected campaigns, and created a public language of solidarity.
The question guiding this work: What kinds of power become possible when workers build their own institutions, media, relationships, and memory?
About My Journey
Biography
I am a PhD student in Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. I study how worker centers and community organizations help immigrant, low-wage, and undocumented workers build voice, leadership, and collective power—especially when traditional union protections are out of reach. Drawing on oral history, ethnography, and the Power Resource Approach, I look closely at how grassroots organizations create spaces of dignity and democratic participation within unequal labor systems.
This work is personal to me. I come from a working-class Mexican and Salvadoran family in Humboldt Park, Chicago, where I saw how hard people worked and how often their knowledge went unrecognized. Years of fieldwork—from documenting Black resistance in the Mississippi Delta to collaborating with Indigenous communities through the Doris Duke Oral History Project—have deepened that commitment. I approach labor scholarship as a form of listening: grounded in collective memory, accountable to the people who share their stories, and connected to struggles for dignity and justice.
Ethical commitment: I follow IRB-approved protocols and oral-consent practices, but ethics goes beyond compliance. It means treating participants as partners, respecting their dignity, and remaining responsible for how their stories are represented.
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