Research Interests: Global history; history of colonialism and capitalism; animal studies; environmental history; history of Latin America and the Global South.

Angélica studies the history of Latin America from a global perspective, specializing in environment, race, labor, agriculture and farming practices.

Her dissertation Colonized Bees in the Tropical Frontier: Beekeeping and Modern Apiculture in the Yucatán Peninsula, Florida, and Cuba from 1760-1940 is about the history of beekeeping practices and industrial apiculture in the context of the Spanish colonization and the development of global capitalism. It focuses on the relocation of the European honeybee Apis Mellifera that did not exist in the Americas before colonization, and the displacement of the native stingless bee Melipona beecheii which is also capable of producing large amounts of honey and wax and has been bred by Maya communities for over 3,000 years in the Yucatán Peninsula. Her research looks at the commonalities, connections, and differences between three locations that were crucial for the development of apiculture in the tropics: Florida, Cuba, and the Yucatán Peninsula. Angélica’s work emphasizes geopolitics, the changing borderlands in the history of colonialism and capitalism in the Americas, and the role of bees and beekeepers in these processes.

Angélica was born and raised in México. After college, she worked as a journalist and led a newspaper in her hometown Guadalajara. She worked in Yucatán on various interdisciplinary projects with historians and anthropologists. In 2016 she completed a second M.A. in History at University California Santa Barbara. She completed her Ph.D. in History of Science in November and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard's Weatherhead Center.

Presentations:

“Colonizing Bees in Yucatán: Modern Apiculture and the Breeding of Apis mellifera during the 20^th Century,” Commodities of Empire International Workshop, Livestock as Global and Imperial Commodities: Economies, Ecologies and Knowledge Regimes, c. 1500 – present, Free University, Berlin, Germany, July 14, 2022.

“Improving the Hive House: Technology and Beekeeping in the Nineteenth-Century Yucatán Peninsula,” Consortium of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine in Latin America, June 2, 2022.

“Abejas colonizadas en la frontera tropical: cultivo de abejas y apicultura moderna en la Península de Yucatán, Cuba y Florida, 1760-1940,” Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social CIESAS-Peninsular, Visiting student, Mérida, Yucatán, México, May 12, 2022.

“The Displacement of the Honeybee of Yucatán and the Birth of Modern Apiculture in the tropics,” Danforth Laboratory, Entomology Department, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, November 4, 2021.

“Modernity and Revolution in the Beehive: The Displacement of the Honeybee of Yucatán and the Birth of Tropical Apiculture in 20th-century México,” Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, October 25, 2021.

“Apicultura desde el Sur: el papel de las abejas nativas en la península de Yucatán durante el siglo XIX,” Seminario Interinstitucional de Historia Agraria Mexicana, UAM-UNAM-COMICH, August 30, 2021

“Beekeeping from the South. The Role of Native Bees in the Yucatán Peninsula during the 19th Century and the Birth of Modern Apiculture,” Environmental Studies Group, The University of Chicago, June 4, 2021.

“Beekeeping during the hacienda expansion: Local Knowledge and Melipona bees in the 19th-Century Yucatán,” in the panel Local Transformations, Global Reconfigurations: From Colonial Bees and Water Management to Free – Trade Avocados in Latin America, CLAH The Conference on Latin American History in Affiliation with the American Historical Association, January 9, 2021.

“Revolutionary Honeybees: The Displacement of the Native Bees in the Yucatán Peninsula,” at Tinker Symposium SOLCHA, Stanford University, November 21, 2019.

“Transmodern Bees in the Tropics: Mapping Honey Production in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean,” Latin America As Laboratory Workshop, Harvard University. 2019

“Abejas modernas: la reconfiguración del paisaje y la ciencia en México del siglo XX,” panel Conexiones transnacionales de la ciencia mexicana. XV Reunión Internacional de Historiadores de México, October, Guadalajara, México: Universidad de Guadalajara. 2018

“Honeybee Networks. Beekeeping in the Twentieth Century: The Cuban case.” Building Bridges Beyond Disciplines, Graduate Students Researching in Cuba, May, New Haven, Connecticut, United States: Yale University. 2018

“Developing Bees: Capitalism, Environment, and Science in the History of Beekeeping.” Workshop Unusual Cures, History of Science Department, February, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States: Harvard University. 2018

Previous Degrees:
B.A., Communication Studies with Concentration in Socio-Cultural Research, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente, Mexico (ITESO)
M.A., Social Anthropology, Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán, Mexico (UADY)

Ph.D., History of Science, Harvard University