Staff profile

I am a historian of early modern Mexico and the Spanish global empire, focusing on the role of Indigenous communities in building colonial-era society and culture. My current research project ‘Living with Plants in Colonial Mexico’ examines relationships between Indigenous peoples and plants in Mexico across the period of Spanish colonial rule (1521-1821). The project asks how relationships between plants and Indigenous communities were affected by colonialism and how in turn, interactions between plants and Indigenous peoples offered opportunities to contest colonial control. In a broader sense, I am interested in exploring how the discipline of history, whose methods and sources are optimised to track human activity, can move towards centering the actions and volition of plants and other more-than-human beings.

I completed my PhD in History at the University of Leicester in 2022. My doctoral dissertation on Indigenous Nahua communities and their defence of traditional alcohol culture (octli/pulque) is currently being revised into a monograph under contract with the University of Arizona Press.Before coming to Durham, I was Departmental Lecturer in Iberian History at Exeter College, University of Oxford (2022-2023), an Astrophoria Foundation Year Tutor at the University of Oxford and a Society for Renaissance Studies Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2024). I am also a qualified librarian (University of Sheffield) and worked for the Bodleian Libraries for two years (2024-2026).

As a current Addison Wheeler Research Fellow, I divide my time between the Department of History and the Institute of Advanced Study.

• Early modern global history
• Colonial Latin America
• History of Mexico
• Indigenous histories
• Nahuatl language and Nahua culture
• Environmental humanities
• Critical Plant Studies