Headshot of Sarah MolinariSarah Molinari is a cultural anthropologist and public scholar who works at the intersection of ethnography, critical environmental studies, feminist geography, and digital humanities. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center and is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her scholarship broadly examines the politics and lived experiences of debt, mutual aid, and the climate crisis in Puerto Rico and the greater Caribbean region. Sarah is also a Faculty Researcher with the Caribbean Collaborative Action Network (NOAA), where she is piloting research on coastal flooding perceptions in Puerto Rico. Along with Mimi Sheller, Sarah is the co-editor of the forthcoming edited volume, Building Equitable Climate Partnerships in the US Caribbean (Palgrave).
Prior to joining the faculty at WPI, Sarah was a postdoctoral researcher with NOAA’s Caribbean Collaborative Action Network (2023-2025) and FIU’s Extreme Events Institute (2021-2023), where she conducted community-engaged research on climate resilience, adaptation, and justice in the US Caribbean and Miami, Florida. From 2023-2024, Sarah was also a Fellow with Princeton University’s Post-Disaster Futures Study Group, where she advanced ongoing research documenting grassroots efforts to repurpose abandoned spaces in Puerto Rico. Sarah has taught interdisciplinary courses on research methodologies at the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey and Caribbean Studies at Hunter College (CUNY). She is a Co-Founder of the Puerto Rico Syllabus, a digital open educational resource for teaching and learning about Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. Sarah’s publications appear in both scholarly and popular outlets such as The Journal of Climate Change and Health, Disasters, Urban Geography, Climate and Development, CENTRO Journal, Aftershocks of Disaster (Haymarket Books), Truthout, and Anthropology News.

 

Headshot of Bárbara López-González

Bárbara López-González is a human geographer whose work engages with the political ecology of disasters, community autogestión (self-management), and the pursuit of transformations and just and sustainable futures. She holds a PhD in Geography and International Development from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada, and currently serves as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, where she is conducting research with the Caribbean Collaborative Action Network (CCAN). Over the last six years, her work has been grounded in Caribbean and Latin American contexts, employing qualitative, ethnographic, and participatory methodologies, as well as community-engaged research and service-learning approaches. Currently, her work is focused on climate and community experiences in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

 

Headshot of Emily LockeEmily Locke is a Ph.D. candidate in biocultural medical anthropology at the University of Alabama. As a researcher and practicing birth doula, she is committed to advancing collaborative perinatal healthcare that honors the ancestral practice of birth work and centers the needs of pregnant people. Her current research examines the relationship between interprofessional collaboration, patient-centered care, and hospital-based doula support.