Graduate Student
Public Affairs and Law
New Jersey and Connecticut, USA
[email protected]

Read Katie’s May 2022 Spotlight on Language, Culture and Justice.

I am a joint-degree student at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and Yale Law School. My professional background is as a Spanish-English interpreter and translator. I worked in community education and outreach with migrant, seasonal, and H-2A farmworkers in North Carolina.

Previously, I was a program assistant at the law clinics at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where I worked directly with asylum seekers, immigrant victims of crime, veterans, tenants facing eviction, and youth and adults involved in the criminal legal system.

I have interpreted in a volunteer capacity for Respond Crisis Translation, Al Otro Lado, and Sanctuary for Families. I was a 2017-18 Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Ixtapan de la Sal, Mexico. In addition to Spanish, I speak intermediate French and am studying the Maya Mam language.

I received a bachelor of arts in psychology from Duke University in 2017 and a master of arts in global security and borders from Queen’s University Belfast in 2021. My master’s dissertation, “(In)credible Fear: Linguistic Refoulement and Indigenous-Language Speakers Seeking Asylum at the U.S.-Mexico Border,” explored linguistic violence against Indigenous people in immigration courts, immigration detention, and border-externalization programs like Title 42 and Migrant Protection Protocols (“Remain in Mexico”). I am continuing to study the intersections between language and access to justice, with a special focus on groups occupying positions of extreme linguistic vulnerability.

Areas of Interest

• Access to justice
• Language access
• Asylum and non-refoulement
• Literacy and law
• Indigenous languages

Works in Progress

• “Linguistic Refoulement and Indigenous-Language Speakers Seeking Asylum.” Article in preparation for submission.