Alvarado’s interdisciplinary research is situated at the nexus of Latina/o/x, visual culture, and gender and sexuality studies. Her first book, Abject Performances: Aesthetic Strategies in Latino Cultural Production (Duke University Press 2018), draws out the irreverent, disruptive aesthetic strategies used by Latino artists and cultural producers who shun standards of respectability, centering negative affect to capture experiences that lie at the edge of mainstream Latino-centered social justice struggles since the 1960s. Alvarado’s research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, the Smithsonian, and Brown University’s Wriston Fellowship for “excellence in teaching and scholarship.” Before joining the faculty at Brown, Alvarado taught at Wesleyan University and New York University where she completed her PhD in American Studies.