Jayson Maurice Porter

Jayson Maurice Porter is an environmental historian of Mexico and the global tropics and a Fulbright-García Robles Scholar.

Based between Mexico City and Chicago, Jayson is a PhD candidate of history at Northwestern University and visiting scholar at Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas.

His dissertation research addresses arsenic pesticides, oilseed cultivation—of sesame, cotton, copra, opium, and marijuana—and military pest control in Sinaloa and Guerrero, but he also writes broadly on environmental change, science and technology, and race in the Americas. The Mexican Intelligence Digital Archive, Derechos Humanos de la Ciudad de México, and the Journal of the Early Republic have supported his archival work.

Jayson holds two masters degrees in history and has completed nearly three years of fieldwork experience in Mexico. Beyond historical research, Jayson has worked as an artist or educator for several museums, AmeriCorps, Stop Hunger Now, and COCOON public space sculpture.