Fields of Interest
Biography
I am an associate professor of Latin American history in the Department of History. My research focuses on the history of science and medicine in Peru, particularly as they relate to the scientific study of indigenous peoples and the history of race science. My previous publications have examined medical reforms in late colonial Peruvian society and the ways doctors thought they could use medicine to engineer population growth and change popular beliefs about health, disease, death, and dying. I published my first book, Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru: Population Growth and the Bourbon Reforms, with University of Pittsburgh Press in 2010. My new research is on the 1900s - 1950s. I look at how physicians and scientists of various kinds investigated and interpreted the relationship between environment, culture, and race/ethnicity among Peru’s highland indigenous peoples. In the Department of History I offer lecture courses and seminars on the histories of Mexico, the Andean region, and colonial Latin America more generally. I also offer a history of medicine course on the origins of the modern global health movement called "Before Global Health: The Histories of Public Health and International Health in the Global South."