about

I am a feminist ethnographer specializing in medical and sociocultural anthropology with active community-based collaborative research projects in the U.S. and in southern Europe/central Mediterranean. I have been a member of the faculty in Anthropology and Director of the Center for Regional Food Studies at the University of Arizona since 2017. I am also affiliated faculty in Africana Studies, Gender and Women’s Studies, Food Studies, Human Rights Practice, Latin American Studies, Middle East and North African Studies, and Arid Lands Resource Sciences at the University of Arizona.

In the past decade, I have authored two critically-acclaimed books, The Unending Hunger: Tracing Women and Food Insecurity Across Borders (2015, University of California Press) which was awarded Outstanding Academic Title by CHOICE and selected as a “California Book-to-Action”, and Island of Hope: Migration and Solidarity in the Mediterranean (2021, University of California Press).

My research has been funded by the Fulbright Schuman European Union Public Affairs Program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Institute for Mexico and the United States (UC-MEXUS), the Agnese Nelms Haury Foundation, and USDA, among others. In 2024, I was recognized with a Distinguished Alumni Award from the Department of Anthropology at UC Santa Barbara, where I received my PhD (2012) and MA (2009) in Anthropology. I earned my BA in Anthropology and Italian from UCLA in 2006.

My book-in-progress, Exit from the United States: Emigration, Carcerality, and Abolition Feminist Futures explores heightened desires among U.S. citizens to leave and permanently relocate abroad. I make the case for examining the experiences of aspiring/current emigrants alongside those engaged in grassroots, abolition movements in the U.S. as they correspond to contemporary struggles for belonging, psychosocial wellbeing, and freedom from interlocking forms of violence within the carceral state. Ultimately, I argue that as an ethnographic object, exit not only reveals the carceral logics that produce violence and constrain mobility, but also points to the possibilities for liberation.

In southern Arizona and the US/Mexico border region, I am coordinating community-based participatory research on water insecurity as part of the statewide Arizona Water for All network. I also co-direct the Future of Food and Social Justice Youth Storytelling Lab at the University of Arizona which aims to center the experiences of BIPOC, queer, and trans students by providing paid internships and diverse opportunities for mentorship, storytelling, and community engagement.

I have been doing research on resource, livelihood, and human rights’ struggles in Italy for the past two decades. My most recent book examined the politics of solidarity in frontline contexts of migrant reception, specifically in Sicily. I continue to collaborate with the Palermo-based participatory film and storytelling lab FunKino: Cinema for Inclusion and I am piloting research on household- and community-level water insecurity in the region.

I serve as an Editorial Committee Member of the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development, Interdisciplinary Studies of the Mediterranean, and Frontiers in Public Health.

On a more personal note, I was born in California and grew up in the coastal town of Santa Cruz. Since finishing high school, I have lived, worked and studied in NYC, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Florence (Italy), Shingu (Japan), Santa Barbara, Seattle, and now in the border community of Tucson, Arizona. I am the mother of two girls and an avid runner, yoga practitioner, and longboard surfer (despite living nowhere near the waves!) I am also a longtime volunteer and organizer with grassroots groups and coalitions committed to migrant justice, human rights, and abolition.