As a built environment historian and migration scholar, Lopez's research focuses on the impact of migrant remittances—dollars earned in the United States and sent to families and communities in Mexico—on the architecture and landscape of rural Mexico and the urban USA. Her acclaimed book, The Remittance Landscape: Spaces of Migration to Rural Mexico and Urban USA, was published by the University of Chicago Press and received the Spiro Kostof Award from the Society of Architectural Historians in 2017. Lopez is currently working on the architecture of immigrant detention facilities in Texas, a project in partnership with the Humanities Action Lab’s national traveling exhibition, States of Incarceration.