Luisa J. Rollins Castillo

I am a doctoral candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology with research interests in environmental politics and governance, discourses of nature and environmental change, labor, and social categories of difference (race, ethnicity, nationality, class, gender) in Latin America and the Caribbean. My dissertation examines how environmental change and governance are experienced in a particular borderland area along the Dominican-Haitian border. I am especially interested in the types of narratives that emerge and how they intertwine with ongoing processes of nation-state building, development, and social difference-making. This research has been generously supported by UIC’s Abraham Lincoln Fellowship and the Chancellor's Graduate Research Award, as well as the Diversifying Faculty in Illinois (DFI) Fellowship and a CUNY Dominican Studies Institute (DSI) Library Research Award

Pallares, Amalia, and Luisa J. Rollins Castillo. “Lifestyle Migration and the Marketization of Countries in Latin America.” In New Migration Patterns in the Americas, edited by Feldmann, Bada, and Schütze, 171-199. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.

Rollins Castillo, Luisa J. “Greening Dispossession: Mining Nature through Ecotourism in the Dominican Southwest.” In The Ecotourism/Extraction Nexus: Political Economies and Rural Realities of (un)Comfortable Bedfellows, edited by Büscher and Davidov, 171-192. London: Routledge, 2013.

Ph.D. Candidate, Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago
Dissertation: Greening the nation? Environment, labor, and nation-building in the Dominican Republic
Committee Chair: Dr. Molly A. Doane, Associate Professor of Anthropology

M.A., Anthropology, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2009
M.A., International Business, University of Florida, 2005
B.S., Economics, University of Central Florida, 2004

2018   Rollins, Luisa J. “Illegibility, Local Politics, and Ambiguous Practices of Statecraft." American Anthropological Association. San Jose, California. November 14-18.

2018   Rollins, Luisa J. “Precarious Belonging and Nationalism in the Dominican Southwest.” Caribbean Studies Association.      La Habana, Cuba. June 4-8.

2017   Rollins, Luisa J. “Guardians, brokers, and smugglers: Negotiating place and meaning in the       Dominican frontier.” Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. Antigua, Guatemala.  Apr. 6-8.

2015   Rollins, Luisa J.  “The Social Landscape of Environmental Conservation in the Dominican  Southwest.” Latin American Studies Association. San Juan, PR. May 27-30.

2013   Rollins, Luisa J. “The Reproduction of Nature, Environmental Justice, and the Limits to the ‘Greening’ of Labor.”  Grabbing ‘Green’: Questioning the Green Economy conference. University of Toronto, ON, Canada. May 17-19.

2012   Rollins, Luisa J. “‘Greening’ Dispossession: Mining Nature Through Ecotourism in the Dominican Southwest.” European Association of Social Anthropologists conference. Nanterre, France, July 10-13.

2011   Rollins, Luisa J. “Having One’s ‘Nature’ and Eating it Too: The Politics of Development, Ecotourism, and Environmentalism in the Dominican Southwest.”American Anthropological Association. Montreal, QC, Canada. November 16-20.

2011   Rollins, Luisa J. “Ecotourism Development and the Neoliberal State in the Dominican Republic.” Society for Applied Anthropology. Seattle, Washington. March 29-April 3.