I am a sociologist of race and ethnicity with a focus on race and racism in transnational context, with a particular interest in racial stratification, identity and belonging, and Blackness and anti-Blackness within and between the U.S. and Latin America. My current research addresses how Afro-Latinxs navigate competing definitions of Black identity in the Americas and whether and how they are allowed to claim Blackness within the U.S. context, where Blackness has historically, socially, and politically been defined in ethnically-narrow ways. Moreover, I ask the question of what does it mean to be “really” or authentically Black, Latinx, and both Black and Latinx in this current moment?

Currently, I am an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University, with affiliations in the Department of African American and Black Diaspora Studies, the Center for Innovation in Social Science, and the Center for Latin American Studies. I earned my PhD (2024) and MA (2021) in Sociology from Duke University, and my BA in Sociology and Africana Studies (2017). from Bowdoin College, where I was an MMUF fellow ‘16 and an IRT fellow.

I was born in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic and moved to the United States with my family when I was young. I grew up in Massachusetts.