Stephanie Buechler, Research Associate
(Ph.D. Binghamton University, 2001)

buechler@email.arizona.edu, 520-621-8256
Haury/Anthro Bldg., Rm. 316
University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721-0030

curriculum vitae

Programs: Development Studies and Environmental Studies

Research Interests

I grew up in an agricultural area of upstate New York with my cultural anthropologist parents and twin sister, and was present during many of their interviews for their field research in Bolivia, Spain and Switzerland.  This sparked my interest in poverty, livelihoods, migration, gender and development.  I attended college in the Philadelphia area and university in Ithaca and later in Binghamton, New York.  Through summer work experiences with migrant worker children, tutoring an inner-city Philadelphia girl, and conducting research on rural poverty, livelihoods, women and factory work in upstate New York, I gained an understanding of poverty and livelihood issues in the U.S. and an appreciation of qualitative, feminist research methodologies to study these issues. After earning a Master’s in Public Affairs I moved to Tegucigalpa, Honduras where I became the coordinator of income generation and development projects for low-income youth and single mothers for an NGO.  After returning to the U.S., I started work on a PhD and went to Mexico with the International Water Management Institute to conduct research on gender, livelihoods and socially stratified access to water for agriculture; I also collaborated  with Mexican colleagues on these issues for other parts of Mexico.  After completing my PhD, I conducted action research in India, Nepal and Mexico on livelihoods and access to groundwater and urban wastewater for agriculture as part of a post doc and then associate research position with the International Water Management Institute office in Hyderabad, India.  In each of the areas I have lived and worked I have also focused on the larger political, economic and social context in which the actors I interviewed are inserted; urbanization, population growth, migration, water competition and scarcity are some of the factors influencing livelihoods and water availability, accessibility, and quality.  I have taught undergraduate courses as a graduate student and, after my time in India, a graduate course entitled ‘Food Security and Livelihoods in Comparative Perspective’ in Clark University’s International Development, Community and Environment Program.

I began my position with BARA as a Research Associate in August 2006 and am currently involved in writing proposals on popularizing rainwater harvesting and grey water use in Arizona, poverty and food security in Tucson, gender and water in Sonora, Mexico and urban agriculture in Mexico and India.  I am also participating in a project on gender and water in South Asia. 

 
Selected Publications
Stephanie Buechler and Gayathri Devi.  Forthcoming 2007. "Highlighting the User in Wastewater Research: Gender, Caste and Class in the Study of Wastewater-dependent Livelihoods in Hyderabad, India” in Sara Ahmed, Suman Rimal Gautam and Margreet Zwarteveen (co-eds.) Gender and Water Management in South Asia.  New Delhi: Sage Press.

Stephanie Buechler and Christopher Scott.  2006.  Wastewater as a Controversial, Contaminated yet Coveted Resource in South Asia.  Case Study for the Human Development Report.  Human Development Report 2006.  United Nations Development Program.

Stephanie Buechler, Gayathri Devi and Ben Keraita.  2006. "Wastewater Use for Urban and Peri-urban Agriculture" in Henk de Zeeuw, Marielle Dubbeling and Rene van Veenhuizen (eds.) Cities Farming for the Future. RUAF Urban Agriculture Programme.  RUAF Foundation. Leusden, the Netherlands.

Stephanie Buechler and Gayathri Devi Mekala.  2005.  “Local Responses to Water Resource Degradation in India: Groundwater Farmer Innovations and the Reversal of Knowledge Flows”. Special issue on water. Journal of Environment and Development.(14) 4.

Stephanie Buechler.  2004. “Women at the Helm of Irrigated Agriculture in Mexico: the Other Side of Male Migration” in Vivienne Bennett, Sonia Dávila Poblete and Maria Nieves Rico (eds.). Opposing Currents: The Politics of Water and Gender in Latin America. University of Pittsburgh Press.

Stephanie Buechler, Gayathri Devi and Rama Devi (Directors). 2003.  “Making a Living along the Musi River: Wastewater Users in and around Hyderabad City, India.”  Documentary film co-produced by the International Water Management Institute, the Department for International Development, UK and the Resource Center for Urban Agriculture and Food Security of the ETC Foundation, the Netherlands.

Stephanie Buechler.  2003. “Irrigated Agriculture on Mexican Ejidos: Complementarities with Off-farm and Non-farm Economic Strategies” in Scott Whiteford and Roberto Melville (eds.).  Managing a Sacred Gift: Changing Water Management Strategies in Mexico. La Jolla: Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego.