Lisa C Breglia

Lisa C Breglia

Lisa C Breglia

Associate Professor

Globalization; Energy, Environment and Sustainability; Political economy of resources; Museums, Heritage, Cultural Policy; Tourism; Mexico, Latin America; Ethnography

Lisa Breglia is Senior Associate Dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and is Associate Professor of Global Affairs. Her 2006 book, Monumental Ambivalence: the Politics of Heritage (University of Texas Press) examines the struggle over national patrimony between public interests and private sector development in Maya archaeological sites across the Yucatán Peninsula. Her second book Living with Oil (2013, UT Press) is an ethnographic investigation of the effects of Mexico's intensive offshore oil industry on Gulf coast communities. Her current research focuses on the relationship between resource security and citizen security in contemporary Mexico.

Current Research

Experiential Dimensions of Climate Change examines how Maya agriculturalists in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula perceive environmental change over time. Using oral histories, this research documents the experiential dimensions of the agricultural environment and perceptions of change based on the point of view of those who have one or more generations working in "milpas," or subsistence agricultural fields of the state of Yucatán. The research seeks to demonstrate how agriculturalists identify, distinguish, and describe the effects of "climate change" on a range of factors (the agricultural cycle, rainfall, soil quality, plant growth, yield) as well as denote the effects of extreme events such as hurricanes and drought. The goal of this research is to contribute a richly detailed, qualitative understanding of the local, culturally-contingent understandings of climate change to the growing compendium of quantitative studies emanating from the natural sciences.

Selected Publications

2013 Living with Oil: Promises, Peaks, and Declines on Mexico’s Gulf Coast. Austin: University of Texas Press.


2006 Monumental Ambivalence: the Politics of Heritage. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Education

PhD Anthropology, Rice University

Dissertation:
Docile Descendants and Illegitimate Heirs: Privatization of Cultural Patrimony in Mexico

MA Religious Studies, University of Florida

Graduate Certificate, Latin American Studies, University of Florida

BA English with Honors, University of Florida