Rate My Professor Anna Erwin

Anna Erwin is an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth, Environmental, and Marine Sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), contributing to Geoscience through her work in environmental social science since joining the faculty in January 2022. She earned a Ph.D. from the Virginia Tech School of Public and International Affairs, completed postdoctoral research at Purdue University's Department of Forestry and Natural Resources, and holds a Bachelor's degree in Environmental Science from UTRGV.

Dr. Erwin, an interdisciplinary environmental social scientist at the nexus of human geography, public policy, and sociology, investigates how communities experience social-ecological change in water-scarce regions, institutional responses through public participation, laws, and governance processes, and strategies to improve organizational adaptation. She leads the Environment and Society Research Team and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Environment and Society, Environmental Justice, and Environmental Policy. Her key publications include "Intersectionality shapes adaptation to social-ecological change" (World Development, 2021), "Centering community voices in mining governance" (Society & Natural Resources, 2022), "Identifying the common ground: Small-scale farmer identity and community" (Journal of Rural Studies, 2020), "Outsourcing governance in Peru’s integrated water resources management" (Land Use Policy, 2021), "Self-organization for community resilience in an invisible agricultural community" (Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 2023), "Collaborative NGO Analysis in NRM: When your collaborator is also your unit of analysis" (Society & Natural Resources, 2023), and "Linking migration to community resilience in the receiving basin of a large-scale water transfer project" (2021). These publications address farmworker resilience, migration, water transfers, mining governance, and NGO roles in natural resource management. She also serves as affiliated faculty for the Center for Critical Race, Risk, and Inclusion Analysis at UTRGV.