DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Biography

Isabel is a dual JD/PhD student in Latin American History and Pritzker School of Law. Her research explores the intersections of gender, family networks, and criminalized economies in Colombia's drug trade, with particular attention to how transnational flows of drugs and people have shaped the criminalization of migration and influenced contemporary US immigration law.

Before coming to Northwestern, Isabel earned a BA in History and Spanish from Duke University. Her undergraduate thesis analyzed memoirs written by women in Pablo Escobar's inner circle to reveal how the drug trade operated as an intimate family business where interpersonal relationships and gendered violence were central to power production. By treating these previously dismissed memoirs as primary sources, her research explored how women played vastly underrepresented roles in negotiating power and status in the drug trade. After graduation, Isabel worked as an immigration paralegal in New York with young people seeking humanitarian aid.