Dr. Maria Elisa Christie

Program Director for Women in International Development, Virginia Tech.

Phone: (540) 231-4297
E-mail: mechristie@vt.edu

Expertise: Gender Equity Specialist

Education:
Ph.D., Geography,University of Texas at Austin, 2003.
Emphasis: Cultural and Political Ecology; Gender, Environment, and Development.
M.A.,Spanish and Women's Studies, University of Oregon, 1994.
B.A., International Studies, History, and Romance Languages, University of Oregon, 1983. 

Languages: Spanish and English (Native), French (Fluent)

Countries of work experience: Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Bolivia, Tunisia, Kenya, Uganda, Senegal, Republic of Guinée, and Mali.

Experience Summary: Dr. Christie has over twenty years of experience in international development and environment working with a variety of development, research, and policy NGOs throughout the developing world and with local, state, and federal governments in the US and Mexico. She has played a key role launching new projects that support international collaboration. For instance, with the Institute for Food and Development Policy and other organizations she helped start the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) and organize its first meeting to bring together farmworker, environmental, and consumer groups in Latin America. She opened and managed Oxfam America's first and model regional field office. Later, she joined the original team to set up the US office of the Environmental Law Alliance (E-LAW) as Development Director, helping to establish a diversified funding base in its first year of operations and developing funding strategies for its international network of public interest environmental lawyers and scientists. She was the Ten State Coordinator on the US-Mexico border working with state environmental agencies and the Western Governor's Association to create a permanent bi-national coordination mechanism for information and technical exchange; with Texas, she organized and facilitated the first annual Ten State Retreat: A Regional Approach to the US-Mexico Border Environment, subsequently working with four other host states; results include a series of state-to-state strategic plans between Texas, New Mexico, and four Mexican border states which Dr. Christie was a responsible for writing and coordinating. In the Caribbean and Central America, Dr. Christie worked with INIES/CRIES, a network of social and economic research institutions to obtain funding for collaborative research, manage relations with donors and international organizations, and organize conferences and public relations.

Dr. Christie's research focuses on gendered spaces and everyday life in nature/society relations, participatory research methodologies, kitchens and gardens, and women's reciprocity networks. Her publications include an article in The Geographical Review's special issue on gardens for which she was guest editor. She has a pending article with Gender, Place, and Culture and a book under contract with the University of Texas Press entitled Women of the Circle: Kitchenspace: Women, Fiestas, and Everyday Life in Central Mexico.

As Program Director for Women in International Development, Dr. Christie's role is to provide leadership within OIRED to ensure that all projects and programs are gender sensitive and will have a positive effect on the most disadvantaged beneficiaries, many of whom are women, and to work with faculty at Virginia Tech in order to increase their capacity to effectively address gender issues in international research and grant proposals. She serves as gender equity specialist on the SANREM and IPM CRSPs managed by Virginia Tech and is also a Peanut CRSP PI.

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