Overview
Aisha Fuenzalida Butt is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology with a graduate minor in Latin American Studies. She is a member of the Cornell Institute of Archaeology and Material Studies (CIAMS).
Her research interests include the materiality of marine plastic and coastal environmental politics. Aisha’s work explores how residents of The Canary Islands, an autonomous zone of Spain, address the global problem of marine waste. She investigates how activists, scientists, and state officials mobilize around marine plastic waste. Her research joins ethnographic and archaeological methods to engage coastal Canarian communities in critically evaluating conservation projects. Her work positions the Canaries as a crucial site to understand how small islands manage ecological vulnerability and engage with planetary scale scientific and economic projects. Aisha's research is supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships Program (NSF-GRFP).
Aisha earned a bachelor’s degree from The City College of New York (CUNY), where she majored in Anthropology and minored in Women’s and Gender Studies. She graduated as valedictorian of the Colin Powell School and was a Mellon-Mays Undergraduate Fellow. Prior to beginning her Ph.D., she served as a Fulbright ETA Scholar and the Fulbright Canarias Culture and Pedagogy Mentor in the Canary Islands, Spain.