My work explores how communities collectively define themselves and the values they represent in practice through cultural performance. My dissertation focuses on the case of the festival of San Fermin in my hometown of Pamplona, in northern Spain. San Fermin, one of the most famous examples of Spanish fiesta thanks to its Running of the Bulls event, attracts millions of visitors every year. As a result, the festival becomes a space where the meanings and values that represent the community of Pamplona are negotiated and contested. I study how community values and moral rules are deployed in practice, how different actors vie for the right to dictate hegemonic narratives about the festival and the community, and how some community members legitimize their own role as regulatory agents of other people’s behavior during the festival. I draw on data gathered for seven years through participant observation, informal interviewing and archival-historical data to analyze how the collective definition of community values and morals works in practice. 

I am Coordinator of Graduate Writing Support at the UConn Writing Center. As coordinator, I manage the graduate writing tutoring program; teach a Graduate Seminar in Academic Writing; and organize writing boot camps, retreats, and writing accountability groups.

I have taught courses in Introduction to Sociology, Social Problems, Deviance and Criminology, Human Rights, Sociology through Science Fiction, and Academic Writing. I have been recognized for excellence in teaching by the UConn Office of the Provost each semester I have taught. I am a Fulbright, FARO and Erasmus scholar.