Scholarship and Biography
A social scientist (B.A. from the Universidad Catolica del Peru, 1976) and an anthropologist (Ph.D. from the University of Florida, 1998), Cristina worked for 25 years as a researcher and program manager in sustainable development, with social groups as diverse as goat herders, poor farmers in the Andes and the Amazon or migrant rural workers in large sugar mills on the coast of Peru. She focused on the links between gender, livelihoods as adaptive strategies to natural environments and changing macroeconomic contexts, and the role of culture and ethnicity maintaining or contesting social hierarchies. Her professional experience ranges from working within a small NGO she co-founded in Peru to heading the Global Social Policy Program for IUCN, an international conservation organization with operation on five continents. She has taught for more than ten years within international graduate programs in the USA and her courses at the MA in SID at the Heller School include: Gender & development, Gender & globalization, Gender & the environment, Gender Analysis, Indigenous peoples & development, Education, gender & development, Shifting development paradigms, Development in Latin America and Interdisciplinary applied research design for development. Cristina's publications include books like Unveiling Differences, Finding a Balance (IUCN, 2004), Desenredando el Laberinto (IUCN, 2002) Migracion, Familia y Socializacion: los cortadores de cana de azucar de Patapo-Pucala (CE&DAP, 1987), more than 15 articles in peer-reviewed journals, in addition to book chapters and technical reports. In addition, Cristina has been serving as a reviewer and article editor for major peer review journals such as Human Ecology., World Development (Elsevier), SAGE Open Journal and the International Journal of Rural Development (Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Colombia) on topics of her expertise, as well as reviewing book projects and grant research proposals for SAGE Publications, Routledge and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada . She participates in several Brandeis events like the 2016 Diversity Conference “Recognize, Empower, Change" and several of the Teach-in on Indigenous Peoples organized by Intercultural Institute as a response to Columbus Day celebration. Currently serves as Editor for the “SDG 5: Gender Equality” SDG sub-series that is part of the Sustainable Development Goal Series (which comprises 17 sub-series, each one addressing a SDG), published by Springer. The first book of this sub-series was published in July of 2021.