I am an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago in the Comparative Human Development Department. I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California Los Angeles in 2020 and was a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell from 2020 to 2022.

I study international migration, and I am especially interested in the experiences of immigrant children and asylum-seekers, in how immigration policies shape migrants’ lives, in how immigrants impact local communities and prompt responses from locals ranging from solidarity to conflict, and in the role of non-profits, legal advocates, and volunteers play in helping the state to manage migration. I’m an expert on Latin American migration to the US, and I have also worked on EU migration policy and issues in the past, a region that I’m still very interested in and follow closely. My research has been supported by several funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, and has been published in various academic journals, as well as in the form of book chapters, policy reports, and op-eds. 

I am the author of the book, Precarious Protections: Unaccompanied Minors Seeking Asylum in the United States (University of California Press. 2023), an ethnographic study that chronicles the experiences and perspectives of Central American unaccompanied minors and their immigration attorneys as they pursue applications for refugee status in the US asylum process