My forthcoming book Grounds for Exclusion: Race, Health, and Disability in Argentina, 1876-1932 (UNC Press, spring 2026) challenges scholars and Argentine society to rethink one of the most dominant and incorrect parts of historical writing and popular memory. Between 1876 and 1932, Argentina excluded with open doors. Over these six decades, state officials developed a long list of grounds for exclusion, which were all reasons that deterred people from ever boarding a ship and that led to the denial of entry to many who tried to come. The widespread inclusion of millions of immigrants in Argentine society in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was predicated on the exclusion of others on the basis of race, health, and disability. Early parts of this research have appeared in the Hispanic American Historical Review and Journal of Migration History.

My last monograph, The Boundaries of Ethnicity: German Immigration and the Language of Belonging in Ontario (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022) considers what it meant to be German in Ontario between 1880 and 1930. It explores how the children of immigrants acquired and negotiated the German language and how religious communities relied on language to reinforce social networks. German speakers, together with immigrants from other countries and Canadians of different ethnic backgrounds, created a framework that defined relationships between the state, the public sphere, ethnic spaces, family, and religion in Canada that would persist through the twentieth century. The Boundaries of Ethnicity uncovers some of the origins of Canadian multiculturalism and government attempts to manage this diversity.

My first monograph, To Belong in Buenos Aires: Germans, Argentines, and the Rise of a Pluralist Society (Stanford University Press, 2018) and its Spanish-language translation Ser de Buenos Aires: Alemanes, argentinos y el surgimiento de una sociedad plural, 1880-1930 (Editorial Biblos, 2019) examine the activities, fantasies, and frustrations of the German speakers who sought to create a lasting community in Buenos Aires and those who challenged that project. Drawing on dozens of private and public archives in Buenos Aires and Germany, I focus in particular on social welfare, education, and religion, and I analyze the efforts of German-speaking immigrants to carve out a place for themselves in the broader landscape of an extremely culturally plural society. The broad group of institutions that German-speaking and other immigrants created in Buenos Aires had a significant impact on how other social actors such as the Argentine state, the Catholic Church, and Spanish-speaking philanthropists involved themselves with citizens and residents of the city. The approach offers new perspectives on broader topics of liberalism, nationalism, and language in the Americas.

Check out the CV and the Research tab to learn more about my projects.