BIO

I am a political scientist and an associate professor of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies with a courtesy appointment in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. My work overall, highlights black solidarity, struggle and voice through an interdisciplinary lens.  My research examines racial politics in the Caribbean and the United States, a research path influenced by my personal connection to the Caribbean and my life as a Black Puerto Rican in the many spaces of the U.S. My current projects focus on political attitudes and identity among Afro-Latinos in the United States and racism and Black consciousness in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean. 

​My book, The Power of Race in Cuba: Racial Ideology and Black Consciousness During the Revolution, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017 ( winner of the Best Book Award from the Race, Ethnicity and Politics section of the American Political Science Association & W.E.B. DuBois Distinguished Book Award from the National Conference of Black Political Scientists).  The book outlines the ways that Black consciousness and solidarity, born out of experiences of marginalization, have challenged structural racism and the narratives that support it. My second book project, with Devyn Spence Benson, builds an oral history of Black Cubans in the United States, not only giving voice to the Black experience in the Cuban Diaspora, but mapping patterns of segregation and exclusion within this community, and anti-Black racism within Latino communities in general.

​My work can be found in Annual Review of Political Science, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Politics, Groups and Identities, Journal of Latin American Studies, Anthurium, and SOULS. At UT Austin, I teach courses such as Racial and Ethnic Politics in the United States, Race in the Americas, Race, Politics and Caribbeans, and Latino Politics. My two new projects focusing on Blackness in Latino communities and politics are both supported by two separate grants from the Russell Sage Foundation.

I received my Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Political Science, my M.A. in Latin American and Caribbean Studies from New York University and a B.A. from Tufts University. I am also a mother of two and a lover of food, baking, sarcasm, music, and rebelliousness.