Christine Folch (Ph.D. 2012, Anthropology) Appointed to Duke University Faculty

Among many projects underway for Christine Folch (Ph.D. 2012, Anthropology) is her first book: a study of the Itaipú Binational Hydroelectric Dam in Brazil and Paraguay - the world's largest source of renewable energy.

"As part of my work on how humans respond to climate change, I'm writing about how sovereignty and sustainability are competing priorities," and how this presages coming changes across the globe, she said.

This fall, Folch will join the faculty of Duke University as assistant professor in the cultural anthropology department, following three years at Wheaton College in Illinois. She has conducted ethnographic and archival research in Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Lebanon, Syria, and the United States, and hopes to add Poland and Uruguay to that list soon.

A Harvard University alumna, Folch credits her professors at the Graduate Center with launching her on the path to publication.
 
"My experience at the GC was the ideal complement to my undergraduate training in history," she says. "Faculty mentors urged me to publish my research even before candidacy, and my advisor, Marc Edelman, encouraged me to follow my hunches and develop my own research agenda from the very start."

Folch, whose work also explores issues of identity and history in Latin America, said she also benefitted from the breadth of scholarship and interests she found at the GC.
 
"One additional strength of the cultural anthropology program was the chance to work with Marxist geographers David Harvey and the late Neil Smith," says Folch. "The cross-disciplinary conversations were incredibly fruitful."