In my scholarship, I center the stories of enslaved and emancipated people as a reflection of my commitment to reimagine how we think, do research, and write about them. At its core, the central tenet of this approach is that enslaved people were, at all times, more human than enslaved - a truth which necessarily (re)shapes our engagements with their memories and the historical record.

This ethos developed out of my experience writing my joint History and Africana Studies Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania, 2024). The dissertation - “Because We Are Now Free”: Libertos’ Post-Emancipation Refusal in Puerto Rico and Impact on Late Nineteenth-Century Abolition (1873-1888) - won the Puerto Rican Studies Association’s Virginia Sanchez Korrol Dissertation Award (2024) and the University of Pennsylvania’s Best Dissertation in Africana Studies Award (2024).

Below, see my selected publications, with links (when available) to digital copies.

Selected Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters:

• “Cimarrones, Rebels, and Plaintiffs: Strategies Enslaved Africans and their Descendants Used to Resist Slavery in Puerto Rico (16th to 19th Centuries).” Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (2025), 113-35

• “Santaisabelinos Beyond the Register: Using the 1870 Enslaved Census of Santa Isabel to Reconstruct Enslaved People’s Experiences in Puerto Rico.” Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 5, no. 1 (2024): 13-21

• “Liberto Refusal Strategies in Response to the Post-Abolition Contract Mandate (1873-1876).” in Néstor Murray Irizarry y Raúl Mayo Santana (eds.), Voces de libertad: El sesquicentenario de la Abolición de la esclavitud en Puerto Rico (1873-2023) (Ponce, Puerto Rico: Casa Paoli, 2024).

• “Overseen and Overlooked: Spanish and British Silencing of Labor Resistance in Post-Emancipation Puerto Rico.” Slavery & Abolition 44, no. 2 (2023): 394-410

Co-authored:

• “Introduction: Entre Aguas/Between the Waters.” Co-written with Jessica Marie Johnson, Sarah Bruno, and Essah Díaz. Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (2025), 5-19

• The Inclusive City Charrette Analysis: A Humanities+Urbanism+Design Partnership between UPenn and Taller Puertorriqueño. Philadelphia: UPenn Humanities+Urbanism+Design Initiative, 2021.

Forthcoming:

• “The Temporal Accordion: Puerto Rican Slavery Studies Through a Black Puerto Rican Historian’s Eyes.” In Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez, Paul Joseph López Oro, and Omaris Z. Zamora (eds.) Afro-Latin@* Reader: Vol. II(Durham: Duke U. Press). Forthcoming.

• “Reframing Puerto Rican Slavery Archives: A Disability History Approach.” In Yomaira Figueroa-Vásquez (ed.), Archives, Memory & the Present Past of Puerto Rico.” (New York: Centro Press). Forthcoming.

In Preparation:

Because We Are Now Free: Refusal and the Emancipatory Imagination in Post-Slavery Puerto Rico.

Editorial Projects:

• Waterproof: Olas de Memoria(special issue focused on interdisciplinary Black Rican Studies), co-edited with Jessica Marie Johnson, Sarah Bruno, and Essah Díaz. Centro Journal 37, no. 1 (Spr. 2025).

• The AfroCENTRO Reader: Revisiting Black Puerto Rican Scholarship (selection of pre-published Centro Journal articles about Black Puerto Rican life, history, and being compiled by Taller Entre Aguas to accompany Waterproof: Olas de Memoria special issue). Hunter College/Center University of New York, 2023.

• Cimarrón: Slavery and Emancipation in Puerto Rico (two-volume edited collection-in-progress about the hemispheric legacies of Puerto Rican slavery and abolition), co-edited with Dr. Jessica Marie Johnson. Centro Press (under contract). Expected publication: Vol. 1: 2027, Vol 2: 2030.