Nancy Sanhueza-Diaz's Bios
Is a Chilean independent academic, she was born in Santiago, the capital of Chile during the dictatorial regime of the genocide Augusto Pinochet. This fact and all the people who disappeared were detained, tortured (more than 10,000 humans), and killed (more than 3,500) during the 17 years of repression in Chile.
This situation touches her very deeply and shapes her personality and expectations for a better, new world, taking care of people, the environment, and Nature. She got to hope when in 1988 there were possible a referendum in Chile for NO more Pinochet. No wins with fear. Then, in 1989 there were the first presidential elections in the country for more than 20 years. Finally, Patricio Aylwin in 1990 took the position of the first president after the dictatorial regime.
During her undergrad at Universidad de Chile (University of Chile), the best university in Chile, and the second-best among all South American countries, she took an immense amount of courses related to all the aspects of Nature and environment, going from Advance Calculus or Cellular Biology to Environmental Experiment Design and Air Pollution and Biology Conservation. Including topics of Environmental Economics, Environmental Sociology, and Bioethics.
Her passion for the well-being of humans and Nature on Planet Earth put her in a dilemma: too many different areas to work, is too difficult to decide for "just one" area of specialization. She has always thought that environmental studies should be multi- and interdisciplinary areas of knowledge. But the School of Sciences requests a Report of Practice (for obtaining the Bachelor's degree) and another year of courses plus a thesis (for obtaining the professional degree). The first Report was a study on Herpetofauna, "Comparison of the herpetofauna species represented in two valleys of the National Reserve Altos of Lircay" during the summery period. This research was the last step in obtaining a Bachelor in Sc. degree, and it went from January until August in 2001. In 2002, she earned a Bachelor in Environmental Sciences, and in 2005 a Professional degree of Environmental Biologist. In order to obtain this last one, she develop a thesis called "Identification of Benefits of Sewage Treatment Plan in the Maipo-Mapocho Watershed, and the VET in the Metropolitan Region, Chile". From there, she understood the vital necessity of obtaining more knowledge of other disciplines like Law, Politics, and Economics, to understand the whole complexity that an environmental problem has.
While getting her B.Sc. in Environmental Science and her Professional Degree in Environmental Biology at the University of Chile, during this period, she was a teaching assistant in several courses including Introduction to Environmental Sciences, Ecosystem and Landscape Ecology, Ecosystem Management, and Applied Ecology. During this time she also was the representative of her career for the Students Federation. To develop her Bachelor’s thesis, she earned a research scholarship in Aguas Andinas S. A. in the issue of environmental systems and economic valuation in a Chilean watershed.
Later in her career, while working in an environmental NGO she earned her MA in Political Science working on her thesis in the relationship of economic growth and sustainable development in public policy in Chile. In the present, in the Ecological Economics Ph.D. program at RPI, she is funded by Fulbright - IIE and CONICYT-Chile grant and DKG award. Her research interests are the valuation of ecosystem services, ecological economics, restoration of natural capital, and in general, the complex interaction among economy, ecosystems, and social systems. Specifically, she worked in a small community in Chile, Caleu, identifying the interaction with the ecosystem services they use, the social and ecological impact of the use of those ecosystem services, the socio-environmental conflict, and the ecology of the Natural Sanctuary.
After she earned her Ph.D. in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York (USA), where she graduated with a dissertation focused on ecological economics, environmental sociology, landscape change, and protected area management. Previously entering to Multidisciplinary Sciences program of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, she was for three years in the doctorate program of ecological economics on the Economics Department of the same university.
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