For my bachelor’s thesis, Foreign Language Pedagogy, at New College: the Honor’s College of Florida, I examined the role of music as a tool to learn foreign languages with research in Cuenca, Ecuador. I founded the study in part on a method called Suggestopedia formulated by the Bulgarian Georgi Lozanov. This method of instruction relied less on hard labor from the student, and emphasized more creating an atmosphere of learning that was fun and relaxed. Accordingly, the brain waves became longer as they turned into  Alpha waves, which makes the student more open to learning by decreasing the stress.

My Master’s research in Latin American Studies at the University of Florida used photographs taken by residents of Samaná, Dominican Republic to help illustrate their interpretation of ecotourism as a mechanism for community-based and ecologically sustainable development. Ecotourism has been lauded as the panacea for ecologically sound, economically profitable, and community-based development. It therefore has become a budding field of research. However, even though community-based ecotourism incurs numerous impacts on the community, most of the literature speaks only of the economic ones. This study analyzes the impacts according to the criteria of the community members themselves, specifically focusing on the defining criteria of development and on the role of gender.

My doctoral work in Cultural Anthropology at the University of Florida delved into the embodied practices of religio-ecological knowledge of religious practitioners in Matanzas, Cuba through the use of documentary video. These embodied ways of learning for Yoruba practitioners in Cuba and beyond include specialized movements, chants, and music that are vital to this endeavor of understanding certain Yoruba conceptualizations of nature that should be valued within the context of national and international conservation policy.