Ureña Valerio illuminates nested imperial and colonial relations using sources ranging from medical texts and state documents to travel literature and fiction. She analyzes scientific and medical debates to connect medicine, migration, and colonialism, providing an invigorating model for the analysis of Polish history from a global perspective.

Lenny A. Ureña Valerio is the associate director for program development at the Latin American and Iberian Institute at the University of New Mexico. Her primary research and teaching interests include imperial/colonial studies, European migration to Latin America, Polish diaspora in Brazil, the history of medicine and public health, and historical methods and theories.