My scholarly work addresses the question about the relationship between mining and capitalism. This inquiry is nested in the meeting point of three branches of knowledge: agrarian change; world history, which places European historical development in global context; and mining archaeology. My research aspires to provide insights to these strands of knowledge, as well as new areas of inquiry useful for understanding the present resource dilemmas of the capitalist world economy. I aspire to impact and inspire students by broadening their academic horizons via systematic study of the ‘world Columbus created.’ I firmly believe in the scholar-teacher model whereby my research scholarship serves as the foundation for, and complement to, teaching excellence.
Education
PhD Syracuse University, Political Science. Dissertation: Women miners in the Brazilian Amazon. Committee Chair: Mark Rupert. August 2003.
BA University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. Political Science. May 1995.
Languages
Fluent in Spanish and English
Basic and conversational Portuguese
Teaching Experience
Department of Political Science, Herbert H. Lehman College
The City University of New York
• Undergraduate courses: Globalization, Classical Political Economy, Political Economy of Development, Global Environmental Politics.
• CUNY Baccalaureate Program Faculty Mentor.
University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, Puerto Rico
Instructor, Department of Political Science, Sep 2003 to May 2008
• Taught undergraduate courses covering the following topics: Introduction to Political Science, Latin American Politics.
Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications
BOOKS
Medieval Mining and Power in Thirteenth-Century Europe: Bishop Wanga’s Private Drainage Works. New York & London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2025.
The Underground Wealth of Nations: on the Capitalist Origins of Silver Mining, A.D. 1150-1450. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 2019.
ARTICLES & BOOK CHAPTERS
• Minerais críticos e guerras imperialistras: a nova dialética da indústria mineira latino-americana.’ A Mineração no Brasil e no Mundo, ed. Frederico Daia Firmiano, Raquel Santos Sant’Ana, Kathiuça Bertollo. UNESP, 2026 forthcoming.
• Remembering the life and times of Eric R. Wolf (1923-1999) in Puerto Rico: a jíbara tribute. Dialectical Anthropology, 49 (2025), pp. 287-307.
• Mining and Metallurgy. Oxford Bibliographies in Renaissance and Reformation. Editor in Chief: Margaret King. Oxford University Press, October 2024.
• Global flows of mining finance and the rise of a new North Atlantic resource hegemony.
Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali, 91 (2024), pp. 333-366.
• Silver mining monopolies and money relations in the ‘Asian age’ of the world economy. The Extractive Industries and Society, 16 (2023), pp. 1-8.
• Mining and development. Elgar Encyclopedia of Development. Edited by Matthew Clarke, and Xinyu Zhao, pp. 412-417. London: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2023.
•
Allison Margaret Bigelow: Mining language. Racial thinking, Indigenous knowledge, and colonial metallurgy in the early Modern Iberian World. International Review of Social History, 67 (2022), pp. 361-363.
• The mining super giants of the medieval world. Institute Europa Subterranea Scientific Journal, 1 (2021), pp. 1-30.
• Capital and mining property relations: reconsidering Marxist understanding of feudal mining land. The Journal of Historical Sociology, 33 (2020), pp. 587-600.
• Capitalist miners in feudal Europe: a commentary on Marxist agrarian history. Journal of Agrarian Change, 19 (2019), pp. 596-613.
• Mining corporations of Western Europe: a succinct survey of business models of the medieval world. The Journal of the Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, 16 (2018), pp. 3-19.
• Ownership of mines and taxation in Castilian laws, from medieval to early modern period. The decisive influence of the sovereign. Continuity and Change: a journal of social structures, law and demography in past societies, 26 (2011), pp. 13-44.
• Finance, industry, and globalization in the early modern period: the example of the House of Fugger. Rivista Di Studi Politici Internazionali, 4 (2008), pp. 554-598.
• ‘Is mining good for development?’ The intellectual history of an unsettled question. Progress in Development Studies, 8 (2008), pp. 129-162.
• Peasant mining as a development strategy: the case of women in gold mining in the Brazilian Amazon. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 71 (2001), pp. 71-106.
• Globalization of gendered labor in peripheral tropical frontiers: women, mining, and capital accumulation in the Brazilian Amazon. In Pit women and others: women miners in developing countries. Editors: Kuntala Lahiri Dutt and Martha Macintyre, pp. 289-305. London: Ashgate Publishers, 2006.
Editorial Boards
Editorial Board Member, BRILL Book Series Studies in Political Economy of Global Labor and Work.
• 10 volumes published since 2023. Studies in Political Economy of Global Labor and Work.
Associate Editor
• Journal of Labor and Society, since 2022. Journal of Labor and Society | Brill.
Media Contributions
The People’s Academy by Progressive International, Geneva, Switzerland.
• ‘On the national question,’ livestreaming, August 26, 2025.
The Age & Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, Victoria and Sydney, Australia.
• ‘The history of Castilian mineral taxation,’ written commentary, September 10-17, 2024.
The Times of India newspaper, New Delhi, India.
• ‘Mining powered the rise of global capitalism, colonization – and ecological catastrophes,’ recorded interview, July 27, 2024.
Cinéma Imaginaire & Trenhorne Films, Strasbourg, France.
• Mirror of Greed – A Film Portrait on Modernity. Recorded interview on mining history, documentary featuring my work in one of its 12 episodes. By filmmaker Gian Godoy, Haute-Savoie & Institut d’Ethnologie, Université de Strasbourg, January 3, 2023. To be released in May 2026.
Refereed Conference Presentations
• Minerales críticos, capital financiero, y hegemonía de países del Atlántico Norte: problemas y perspectivas para América Latina. X Conferencia Latinoamericana y Caribeña de Ciencias Sociales, ‘Economía, debates sobre los modelos y alternativas de desarrollo y crisis sistémica,’ Bogotá, Colombia, June 9-12, 2025.
• Global flows of mining loans, 1970s-2010s: finance capital, resource competition and the shifting hegemonies of the world economy. 7th Congress of the World International Studies Committee, ‘Challenges to be faced in building a New Shared Global Order,’ Warsaw, Poland, July 24-26, 2024.
• ‘The eagle and the lamb’: a political economy study of The people of Puerto Rico. Primer Congreso de la Asociación Latinoamericana de Historia Rural, ‘Los retos de la historia rural de América Latina, trascendiendo temporalidades, espacios y fronteras,’ Ciudad de México, 24-27 de junio de 2024.
• Mining capital and empire: the last 100 years. 2023 Annual Conference of the International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy, ‘The chronicles of multiple crisis foretold,’ Madrid, Spain, September 6-8, 2023.
• Strategic ores: geology, finance, and warfare in the decline of US global power. The Post/ Extractivism Working Group 2022-2023 of the Canadian Association of Latin American Studies [online], Organized by Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto, October 25, 2022.
• Silver-mining and world-ecology: the last 1,000 years. 4th Annual Conference World-Ecology Research Network, Helsinki, Finland, August 18, 2018.
• Mining corporations, 12th to 14th c.: a succinct global survey. National Association of Mining History Organizations, Mining Heritage Trust of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland, June 19, 2016.
• Shareholding mining corporations, A.D. 1150-1450. Symposium on Business and Economic History 2015, Lupcon Center for Business Research, Ebermannstadt, Germany, Lisbon, Portugal, May 30, 2015.
• Silver mining before the rise of the modern world-system: a succinct survey. Crossing Divides. Association of Environmental Historians, San Francisco, California, March 12, 2014.
• Mining and money in the early modern period. Berkeley Geography Colloquium Series, Department of Geography, UCLA-Berkeley, Berkeley, California, September 21, 2011.
• Mercury amalgamation in Hispanic America: globalization of a mining technique, XVI-XVII centuries. XXIII International Congress for the History of Science and Technology, Ideas and Instruments in Social Context, International Union of History and Philosophy of Science, Budapest, July 28, 2009.
• Spanish American metallic jurisprudence, XVI-XVII centuries: liberty, rights and property in mining law. Mining Across Generations, Department of Social Anthropology, King’s College, Cambridge University, Cambridge, England, January 9, 2009.
• Globalization of mining capital in the sixteenth century: the Fugger mining contracts from Central Europe to the New World. European Centre of Excellence Jean Monnet-Luigi Einaudi, Faculty of Economics, Sapienza Università di Roma, Rome, Italy, March 27, 2008.
• Land, property rights and mining: The question of the peasant miner in historical perspective. Conference Mining, Gender and Sustainable Livelihoods, Australian National University & The World Bank Group, Canberra, Australia, November 6, 2008.
Service to the University
• Political Economy Conversations. Speaker series inaugurated Fall 2024, hosting Miguel Fernández Ordóñez, past Governor of the Bank of Spain and former Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund; award-winning economic historian Carlos Marichal, El Colegio de México. Fall 2024 – present.
• CUNY Open Educational Resources Scale Up Initiative. Design of POL 241 Globalization syllabus for CUNY Open Educational Program. Spring 2024.
• Executive Taskforce, Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education Faculty Job Satisfaction Survey. Member of the committee responsible for implementing survey administration cycle. Fall 2022 – Fall 2024.
• College Honors Program Advisory Council. Member of Lehman College Curriculum and Course Instruction Committee responsible for Lehman College Honor’s Program curriculum. January 2023 – January 2025.
• CUNY Baccalaureate for Unique and Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Mentor. Supervised and evaluated study areas chosen by Lehman College Political Science students, ensuring areas were valid and prepared students for pursuing graduate studies. Spring 2013 – Spring 2019.
• The Research Foundation PSC-CUNY. Member of Political Science & Economics Panel that evaluates CUNY Faculty Research Grant Applications. Spring 2014 – Spring 2023.
• Globalization Speaker Series. An interdisciplinary guest talk hosted by my POL 241 globalization course and opened to the College. Guests included scholars and practitioners from Georgetown University, Brown University, US Army Corps of Civil Engineers, Hawai’i Institute for Human Rights, and University of the Pacific, among others.
• Lehman College Political Science Curriculum Committee.
Service to the Profession
• Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, OAW [Austrian Academy of Sciences]. Guest reviewer of scientific project titled ‘Itineraria Metallorum – Routes of metal/ Wege des Metalls.’ Spring 2022.
• Book and article manuscript reviews for Journal of World-Systems Research, Sociological Lenses, In Pursuit of Luxury Journal, Journal of Latin American Geography; European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, BRILL, Rowman and Littlefield
and Lynne Rienner, ZED Books, among others.
• Pluto Wildcat Series: a series of essential works from Pluto. Guest book discussant for ‘Organizing insurgency workers’ movements in the Global South.’ Organized by Pluto Press Wildcat Book Series. May 22, 2021.
• The Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Free Competition Humanities, 2017-2018 cycle. Guest reviewer of scientific project titled ‘Sustainability trade-offs in production chains between the Netherlands and Less Developed Countries, 1920-2020 (acronym: SUSTAIN).’ Spring 2018.
• International Bar Association Mining Law Committee. Guest Reviewer, ‘Model Mining Development Agreement.’ Fall 2011.
Service to the Community
• Steering Committee and Faculty Member, The Academy, Progressive International. Since September 2024.
• SUNY-Purchase Guest Speaker, Mining and extractive industries: challenges of development, April 18, 2024.
• PSC- IC Committee, guest talk, Bolivian labor & MAS’ socialist industrialization. October 16, 2020.
• PSC CUNY Junior Faculty Development Day, Orientation panel, PSC CUNY Union Hall. April 5, 2019.
• Leonard Lief Library Reading Series, ‘The underground wealth of nations,’ Lehman College Library Treehouse. December 12, 2016.
• Guest speaker, Cynthia Arno Summer Youth Program, 1199 SEIU. New York, N.Y. May 15, 2014.
• Student Leadership Retreat. Talk: ‘Key components in a winning essay for prestigious scholarships and internships.’ Edith Macy Conference Center, N.Y. Organized by Lehman Center for Student Leadership Development. September 20, 2014.
Magazine, Trade & Newspaper Articles
• UTIER: independent Puerto Rican electrical trade union fighting US neoliberal privatization. Labor Today, October 2022, pp. 1-8.
• Actualización sobre Bolivia. Labor Today, November 2020, pp. 1-6.
• Bolivia and Ecuador continue the struggle against neoliberal austerity. Labor Today, September 2020, pp. 1-7.
• Perspective on the recent protests in Bolivia. Labor Today, August 2020, pp. 1-5.
• La globalización de China y su impacto en América Latina. Diálogo, octubre-noviembre 2006, pp. 34-35.
• Estados Unidos en los tratados ambientales multilaterales: ¿ejercicio de soberanía? Diálogo, mayo-junio 2005, pp. 38-39.
• ¿Hacia dónde van las Ciencias Sociales? Co-authored with Viviana Abreu. Diálogo, febrero-marzo 2004, pp. 16-17.
• El fracaso de las negociaciones globales. Diálogo, octubre-noviembre 2003, p. 13.
• El nuevo Lula de Brasil: desafíos del centro a la izquierda. Diálogo, octubre-noviembre 2002, p. 25.
• Entre el Norte y el Sur: economía, hidroestrategia y ambiente. Diálogo, agosto-septiembre 2002, pp. 25-26.
Professional Affiliations
International Initiative for the Promotion of Political Economy 2026 IIPPE Annual Conference – IIPPE
European Society for the History of Economic Thought The European Society for the History of Economic Thought – ESHET
