My work examines the history of medicine and public health in the Spanish empire (16-18th centuries), with special attention to how the politics of colonialism, including notions of race and ethnicity, shaped medical and institutional practices, especially hospitals. My first book was on a colonial mental hospital in Mexico City and the medicalization of madness. My current book project (Nursing an Empire) is a history of global health and hospital care in the empire writ large. A major component of this project examines the rise of hospitals dedicated exclusively for indigenous populations and how such institutions were shaped by the evangelical project of church and state, and emerging notions of race and bodily difference.