I study the histories of medicine and migration in the Americas, with a primary focus on the historical health and healing strategies of migrant agricultural workers who travel(ed) cyclically between central Mexico and southern Ontario in the late twentieth century. I seek to investigate how such health and healing strategies have influenced and been influenced by the development of the Mexican and Canadian state public health systems, as well as formal migrant labor programs. I completed a Master’s in History and International Development Studies at the University of Guelph in 2018, where my MA thesis examined the tumultuous history of joint Rockefeller Rockefeller and Colombian government-led anti-hookworm campaigns among agricultural workers in Colombia’s coffee zone, 1919-1935.
I am interested in how people have managed illness and injury themselves, particularly in the absence of the health systems with which they grew up, how their experiences of injury, creativity, and resilience produce medical knowledge, and how medical communities can ameliorate, alter, and/or exacerbate inequalities.