Titles

• Senior Sustainability Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability
• Associate Professor, School of Transborder Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
• Affiliated Faculty, Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability

Biography

Dr. Cruz-Torres' research focuses on the impact of globalization and neoliberal policies upon the environment, local communities and households. Her current research, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, examines the intersections between gender and sustainability in the shrimp industry of northwestern Mexico. Dr. Cruz-Torres has conducted research on the social and environmental dimensions of fisheries and aquaculture development in Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Florida. She has also conducted research on the political ecology of water and irrigation in the Mexicali-Calexico border. She was a consultant for a National Science Foundation Bio-complexity Project focusing on the links between human and biophysical processes in coastal marine ecosystems in Baja California, Mexico. She is currently the President of the Political Ecology Society and teaches courses on political ecology and ethnography of the borderlands and on gender and sustainability.

Education

• PhD, Rutgers University, 1991
• MA, Rutgers University, 1987
• BS, University of Puerto Rico, 1985

Expertise

• urban social-ecological systems
• coastal and marine life
• water resources and treatment
• food
• conservation
• immigration/emigration
• natural resources
• gender
• urban affairs/planning
• climate change
• agriculture
• economic development
• ecology
• Life Below Water
• Gender Equality
• Reduced Inequalities
• human ecology
• climate change impacts
• food policy
• fisheries management
• urban development
• marine ecology
• economic anthropology
• poverty
• land use and land cover
• food systems
• agrarian societies
• migration
• fisheries
• natural resource management