The History and Politics Lab’s goal is, to use Toni Morrison’s words, to shed critical light on the “politics and history calculated to render the suffering of millions mute,” by refusing “arrogant pseudo-empirical language crafted to lock creative people into cages of inferiority and hopelessness.”

The lab, which is hosted by UC Irvine’s School of Social Ecology, is currently developing the following projects:

Human Trafficking and Forced Labor Research Group, with Iza Camarillo (UCI Labor Center) and Han Parker. Our diverse team of undergraduate students, graduate fellows, and postdoctoral researchers has conducted pioneering research on topics ranging from forced labor in ICE detention centers to global movements against human trafficking and the political economy of child soldiering. We are also in the pre-production stage for a documentary film. As a research team, we are interested, above all, in how contemporary economies strongly rely, often in very open and transparent ways, on forced labor.

History and Politics Virtual Community (Western Political Science Association, with Vikram Visana)

Brasil Initiative (CAPES)

Municipal Participatory Budgeting and Democratic Resilience: A Mixed-Method Approach (with Arwa Hammad, Sally Casanova Scholarship)

U.S. Concentration, Detention, and Internment Camps (DREAM Project)

Critical and Interpretive Methods in Law and Society: A Workshop for Graduate Students and Early Career Scholars (2025 Advance Grant, Law and Society Association)

The Voices of Democracy: A Ten-minute Monologue Festival (2025 VOICE Grant, UC National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement)

More soon!