I am a forensic anthropologist interested in perceptions of race, and the use of ancestry in both forensic investigations and the practice of forensic anthropology.  I use genetic and skeletal data to study estimates of ancestry in present day Latin American populations. I'm particularly interested in how ancestry as a piece of information drawn from the body, can impact the identification process of that person. Recently, my work with ancestry is centered  around the deaths of migrants along the US-Mexico border.