Leadership

I am the Director for the Center for Global Health at Arizona State University. As the director for the center, I continue to participate in and direct postdoctoral research efforts, supervise doctoral candidates, speak on my research and work at various institutions and conferences, as well as organize and participate in faculty collaborations.

I am the Director of the National Science Foundation Cultural Anthropology Methods Program. The program provides advanced methods training for Ph.D. students who are currently studying in the US. Together, our 40 distinguished international faculty draw on cutting-edge research to update and expand the anthropology methods toolkit. We are also launching CAMP International, an online education effort partnered with major international anthropology organizations. To learn more about the program and our faculty please visit our Methods4all website. 

In my role as Associate Director, I lead and support projects, workshops, and research within ASU's Intitute for Social Science Research. The institute supports the development and launching of new methods courses in the social sciences by offering training to students and professionals alike.

Water Security

Water security and equitable access to water is an issue we are facing today that is very close to my heart. Here in Arizona, I have leadership roles on several research projects that work to study water security and improve water equity. 

 

Action for Water Equity - Director

Our work at Action for Water Equity is a partnership between academic researchers, 72 colonias on the U.S.-Mexico border states, the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP), Communities United, and the Rural Community Assistance Corporation. Our work is dedicated to understanding how integrated engineered and social infrastructures can meet the needs of water-insecure colonias. Working together, we created new methods for collaborative research, including community-based participant-observation to identify community needs (Roque et al. 2023).

 

 

Arizona Water Innovation Initiative - Strategy Team 

The Arizona Water Innovation Initiative is a statewide project led by the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory in collaboration with Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. Through this initiative, ASU works with industrial, municipal, agricultural, tribal and international partners to rapidly accelerate and deploy new approaches and technology for water conservation, augmentation, desalination, efficiency, infrastructure and reuse. 

 

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Arizona Water for All - Project Leader

Arizona Water for All is a project under the Arizona Water Innovation Initiative. In partnership with the Center for Global Health , Arizona Water for All will work to enhance the long-term water security for all Arizonans by collaborating on solutions with our state’s most water-insecure communities. Our vital work in water-insecure households along the U.S.- Mexico border has been co-facilitated with partners at the Rural Community Assistance Partnership (RCAP) and the Rural Community Assistance Corporation (RCAC). We are excited to continue to collaborate with our community partners throughout the four-year grant period to leverage our resources and have the largest possible impact on sustained water security. 

To learn more about our ongoing research and community partnerships, please visit our website at https://shesc.asu.edu/centers/global-health/aw4a 

 

Global Ethnohydrology Study - Study Lead/Project Lead

The Global Ethnohydrology Study is a transdisciplinary, multi-year, multi-site program of research that examines the range of variation in local ecological knowledge of water issues, also known as “ethnohydrology.” It focuses on showing how factors, such as increasing urbanization, water scarcity and climate change, are related to changes in cultural ideas and knowledge.

Each year, we focus in on a different specific issue, made possible through collaborating with experts from many fields along with our network of site leads:

2023-24 | Experiencing Thirst

Collaborating with Stavros Kavouras, Director of the Hydration Science Lab at ASU, we are planning to use cross-cultural comparison to map the ways people recognize and interpret the physical-emotional symptoms and sensations of thirst. 

To learn more about the current research and past themes, please visit our website at https://shesc.asu.edu/research/projects/global-ethnohydrology-study-1 

 

Household Water Insecurities Experiences | Research Coordination Network - Executive Committee

The Household Water Insecurities Experiences Research Coordination Network (HWISE-RCN) is a community of scholars and practitioners who research and work in the interdisciplinary field of water insecurity. The RCN is an NSF-funded initiative (2018-2023) dedicated to building a community of practice that fosters key analytics and theoretical advances coupled with the development of research protocols and standardized assessments to document, benchmark, and understand the causes and outcomes of water insecurity at the household scale.

To learn more about HWISE-RCN please visit our website at https://hwise-rcn.org/hwise-community/