Elise Trott

Elise Trott is an Ethnology PhD student at the University of New Mexico. She received her BA in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2007 and her MA in Anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 2012. Elise is a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her research interests include the ethnography of New Mexico, activism and social movements, political ecology, and the anthropology of the environment. Her dissertation research focuses on environmental and community activism in the Española Valley of northern New Mexico and the South Valley of Albuquerque. Since 2010, Elise has also been involved with a long-term community-based participatory research project supported by the Ortiz Center and the New Mexico Acequia Association that focuses on documenting the traditional knowledge of New Mexico’s mayordomos, or irrigation ditch bosses. As part of that project, she developed and edited an educational film entitled “The Art of Mayordomía.” Her education and research has been supported by the University of New Mexico’s Binford Scholarship, the New Mexico Folklore Award, and the Alfonso Ortiz Public Policy Fellowship.