Elise Milburn is a PhD candidate at Pennsylvania State University and a scholar of the environmental history of colonial New Spain. Her work examines the role of botany, Indigenous knowledge, insects, and Spanish agricultural projects in shaping the intellectual and natural environment of Mexico and the Spanish Caribbean. She analyses the impact of Spanish and Indigenous agricultural projects on the natural environment and argues that the environment is a point of cultural contact after the conquest, and an ongoing site of contest between Indigenous, Spanish, and non-human actors throughout the colonial period.