Crystal A. Felima
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African American & Africana Studies

How to pronounce my name.

As a cultural anthropologist and feminist scholar in disaster studies, I survey the ways humans shape their environment and explore the complexity and dimensions of risk and vulnerability. Essential to my research is highlighting the individual and collective voices of vulnerable populations and communities. I believe it is necessary to promote and advocate for local perspectives and strategies to address ecological issues. As a result, narrative research is an essential component to my research agenda.

My book project highlights disaster narrative experiences to explore discussions on social inequality, vulnerability, and development in Haiti. With my continued research on disasters in Haiti, I consider how Haitians and other groups negotiate and articulate their lives in ecological crises and socio-economic and political conflicts perpetuated by the State and the global capitalist system. I am also a co-series editor for the Berghahn Books’ Catastrophes in Context series. I am a former NSEP Boren Fellow to Haiti, which supported my doctoral research on disaster risk and flooding in Haiti. I am also a former CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow in Caribbean Data Curation at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida. I focused on the emerging trends and best practices in digital humanities, critical pedagogies, and e-scholarship in Caribbean Studies.

I am an applied anthropologist. I have experience working as an emergency management specialist, geospatial analyst and equity advisor at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in Washington, DC.

Teaching at UKY

  • Human Rights in Global Perspective
  • Decolonizing Ecologies
  • Debility and After/Alterlives
  • Culture, Environment and Global Issues 
  • Disasters and Racial Ecologies 
  • Contemporary African Lives

 

Contact Information
crystal.felima@uky.edu
208 Lafferty Hall
Education
- PhD Anthropology, University of Florida
- MA Africana Studies, Cornell University
- BA African American Studies, University of South Carolina
Research Interests
  • Disasters and Crises
  • Emergency Management and Response
  • climate change
  • Black Ecologies
  • Mapping and GIS
  • Black Feminist Theory
  • Narrative Research
  • Embodiment and Exposure
  • Haiti
  • Caribbean
  • Small Islands
  • West Africa
Affiliations
  • Anthropology
  • Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies
  • African American and Africana Studies
  • Environmental and Sustainability Studies
  • Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies
  • Gender and Women's Studies
  • Social Theory