Education

Ph.D., Cornell University 

Fields and Specialties

U.S. immigration history; U.S. foreign relations; U.S. history since 1950; Asian American studies 

Teaching Areas

U.S. histories of refugee policy, child migration, foreign relations, and covert interventions in Southeast Asia and Latin America 

Research Interests

Works In Progress

Asylum Archipelago: Conditional Refuge in the U.S. Empire of Migrants 

• Examines U.S. refugee and asylum policy in U.S. territories and other sites of U.S. empire between the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam and the early years of the War on Terror 

Guantánamo Kids: Refugee Children and the U.S. Caribbean Detention Apparatus

• Compares the U.S. federal government's treatment of Cuban and Haitian child migrants between 1980 and 1995 with specific attention to their detention at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base 

Selected Publications 

“Guam, Where US Refugee History Begins? Crafting Operation New Life through Territorial Diplomacy in the US Empire,” Journal of American Ethnic History 45, no. 3 (Spring 2026): 49-84.

Awards

Outstanding Dissertation Award, Immigration and Ethnic History Society, 2026 

William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Early Career Scholar Fellowship, The William Nelson Cromwell Foundation and American Society for Legal History, 2023

Littleton-Griswold Grant, American Historical Association, 2023

Myrna F. Bernath Fellowship, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, 2023