Isabella Alcañiz
Director and Affiliate Faculty, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center
Government and Politics
(301) 405-4156ialcaniz@umd.edu
3104A Tydings Hall
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Research Expertise
Disaster Policy
Gender
Politics of Climate Change
Social Inequality
Dr. Isabella Alcañiz is Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center and Professor and Associate Chair of the Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland (UMD). Professor Alcañiz studies the politics of climate change, social inequality, disaster policy, and gender with a focus on Latin America and Latinx residents of the United States. Her research has been published widely, including in Environmental Politics, Global Environmental Politics, Journal of Cleaner Production, Water Policy, Environmental Science and Policy, World Politics, and the Latin American Research Review. Her books Environmental and Nuclear Networks in the Global South: How Skills Shape International Cooperation and The Distributive Politics of Environmental Protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (co-authored with Ricardo A. Gutiérrez in the Elements Series in Politics and Society in Latin America) were published by Cambridge University Press. Isabella Alcañiz received a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a Licenciatura in International Relations from the Universidad de Belgrano (Argentina).
Publications
How International Donations of Environmental Aid Reach Subnational Beneficiaries in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico
The fight against climate change increasingly connects International Organizations (IOs), national governments, and subnational governments.
Author/Lead: Isabella AlcañizNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Agustina Giraudy
How are international funds to fight climate change and environmental degradation distributed to subnational beneficiaries? This research develops a novel multilevel theory that poses that tension between the preferences of the IO and national governments helps explain the subnational distribution of environmental aid – even more than pure environmental or social need.
The Distributive Politics of Environmental Protection in Latin America and the Caribbean
Who benefits from the appropriation and pollution of the environment and who pays the costs of climate change and environmental degradation.
Author/Lead: Isabella AlcañizNon-ARHU Contributor(s): Ricardo Gutierrez
The study of environmental politics in Latin America and the Caribbean expands as conflicts stemming from the deterioration of the natural world increase. Yet this scholarship has not generated a broad research agenda similar to the ones that emerged around other key political phenomena. This book seeks to address the lack of a comprehensive research agenda in Latin American and Caribbean environmental politics and helps integrate the existing, disparate literatures.