She completed her PhD at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011. Her primary research focuses on membership and belonging for Latina/o immigrant and second-generation youth in North Carolina, and return migrant and deportee youth and young adults in Mexico. In a second line of research, she examines transnational families in the United States and Mexico. She loves teaching the research methods / junior seminar core sequence every year, but she is especially passionate about her courses on immigration and human rights and immigration and education. Her book: Shifting Boundaries: Immigrant Youth Negotiating National, State and Small Town Politics is available from Stanford University Press and on Amazon.