Emily Hite was awarded the National Science Foundation's Cultural Anthropology Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant (DDRIG) for $20,000. I begin research February 1, 2018. My dissertation research seeks to understand the policies, mechanisms, and power dynamics used to mitigate and adapt to climate change and how they produce and transform spaces and places, cultures, and identities. More specifically, I focus on studying the paradox of hydroelectricity, a primary climate governance mechanism that is simultaneously promoted as a solution to climate change and critiqued for its negative social-ecological impacts. I work in Costa Rica, primarily with the Térraba peoples in southwestern Puntarenas Province. I'll conduct ethnographic and ecological research to understand the diversity of perspectives of and responses to state climate policy and the potential social-ecological implications of the Diquís Hydroelectric Project.
