My research sits at the intersection of political sociology, political economy, comparative politics, and the sociology of race and class inequality. I am a historical materialist and critical theorist whose work draws on the Gramscian tradition and Marxist political economy to analyze the structural conditions producing the resurgence of far-right authoritarianism in the United States and Latin America. My scholarship combines extensive qualitative fieldwork, interview research, and original survey data with critical theoretical analysis, and is animated by a commitment to building the empirical and theoretical groundwork for understanding — and resisting — the contemporary authoritarian turn.

I am currently at work on my first monograph, The Crisis of Neoliberalism and Far-right Politics in Southern California, under review with Oxford University Press (Subaltern Latino Politics series). Drawing upon 60 semi-structured interviews, three years of fieldwork, and original survey data, this project investigates the rise of far-right political movements among White and Mexican American communities in Southern California's Inland Empire. Grounded in a historical materialist and Gramscian theoretical framework, I analyze such politics in relation to local histories of settler colonialism, capital accumulation, and racial authoritarianism, and the increasingly fragmented and volatile social and class relations emerging from the crisis of neoliberalism. Through critical theoretical and comparative analysis the study reveals distinct ways in which far-right politics is articulated and legitimated across race and class, and contributes to a growing body of critical scholarship that seeks not only to explain the modern far-right but to build the theoretical and empirical groundwork for resisting it.

My next project, A Time of Monsters: Capital, Uneven and Combined Development, and Far-Right Politicsin the Americas, expands my study of the nature and forces contributing to the rise of the far-right by examining this phenomenon within Latin America. Over the past decade, far-right, populist political movements have seen a resurgence throughout the region, posing significant threats to liberal democratic institutions, the environment, and historically marginalized communities, including women, Indigenous communities, Afro Latinxs, LGBTQ+ people, environmental activists, and working-class people more generally. Building upon my research of the US far-right, I am developing a new comparative research project examining this phenomenon in Latin America, focusing on Argentina, Brazil, México, and Colombia.

My previously published research focused on social movement mobilization, social justice, and policing of Latinx communities in Southern California.