RISE 2019 Conference

Transforming University Engagement In Pre- and Post-Disaster Environments: Lessons from Puerto Rico

Sandy Smith-Nonini

Adjunct Assistant Professor

University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill

 

havidan rodriguez photo

Sandy Smith-Nonini, Ph.D., teaches in the Anthropology Dept. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was an assistant professor at Elon University from 2000-2005. Sandy’s current research is on the relationship of oil dependence, debt and “new” energy poverty, a comparative project with fieldwork in Greece and Puerto Rico. She recently produced and wrote Dis.em.POWER.ed: Puerto Rico’s Perfect Storm, a film directed by Roque Nonini, on the causes of the longest blackout in the United States: www.disempoweredfilm.com. Sandy authored Healing the Body Politic: El Salvador’s Popular Struggle for Health Rights – From Civil War to Neoliberal Peace, (Rutgers University Press, 2010) with support from a Richard Carley Hunt Writing Award from the Wenner Gren Foundation. She is a former recipient of the Peter K. New Prize from the Society for Applied Anthropology. Sandy received her PhD from UNC-CH in 1998, and her BS from Duke University. She worked as a journalist for a decade during the 1980s, and was based for 2 years out of San Salvador, covering the civil war for US newspapers. She has been an activist for health rights, farm labor rights, and currently in the movement for clean energy. In 2011 she founded CommunEcos, a non-profit in Durham, NC, which over the last 8 years has held over 300 educational events on environmental sustainability.