Aixa Alemán-Díaz
Aixa, 24 years old, was born and raised in Puerto Rico. She completed a double major in Psychology and Anthropology at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor in August 2005. My honors BA thesis was titled Commerce, Research, and Conservation: Contributions and Challenges of Marine Extension Work in the Puerto Rico Sea Grant Program. It conducted a critical history of extension work within the context of Sea Grant, and comprised research sites in PR, but also in Michigan and at national Sea Grant offices in Washington, D.C. Her thesis advisors were Dr Rebecca Hardin in Michigan, and Dr Manuel Valdes-Pizzini, in Puerto Rico. Aixa met Rebecca as a student in her Environment 256 course.
As of June 2008, she is an NSF funded second-year doctoral student at Rutgers University in the Department of Anthropology, focusing on the subfield of Cultural and Environmental Anthropology. Since 1999, she has completed research in various disciplines such as psychology, public health, cultural anthropology and the environment. She also completed a two-year internship at the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. Since May 2008, she is a certified PADI Open Water diver.
Aixa’s research interests are to understand human-environment relationships within the areas of climate change, tourism and recreation. She wants specifically to analyze how different groups or stakeholders perceive and value the environment in order to identify areas of conflict concerning coastal and marine resources such as beaches or marine protected areas. Her focus is on tropical island ecosystems within the Caribbean and the Pacific regions.
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Honors Thesis |
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