Dr. Lucero Radonic is an assistant professor at Michigan State University where she have a joint appointment in the Department of Anthropology and the Environmental Science and Policy Program. Dr. Radonic’s research examines water governance at the intersection of climate change and urbanization. Specifically her work analyzes how different stakeholders make sense and transform water policies and how they differentially engage with diverse water infrastructures.
Dr. Radonic’s early research examined indigenous water rights and the human right to water in the context of contentious large-scale water infrastructure developments in the U.S. Southwest and Northwestern Mexico. This work sparked her interest in looking at small-scale, decentralized forms of water infrastructure and the role of cooperation in water governance. So, more recently, she has conducted ethnographic research on people’s intimate relationship to water conservation by looking at stormwater infrastructure policies and practices. Specifically, this work documents the strategies used by cities and urban residents to adapt to climate change and make a home where drought and extreme heat events have become protracted conditions.
Selected Publications
Radonic, Lucero. 2019. “Becoming with rainwater: A study of hydrosocial relations and subjectivity in a desert city” Journal of Economic Anthropology, 6(2): 291-303.
Radonic, Lucero. 2019. “Re-conceptualising water conservation: Rainwater harvesting in the desert of the southwestern United States” Water Alternatives, 12 (2): 699-714.
Radonic, Lucero. 2018. “When catching the rain: A cultural model approach to urban water governance” Human Organization,77(2): 172-184.
Radonic, Lucero. 2017. “Through the aqueduct and the courts: An analysis of the universal right to water and Indigenous water rights in Northwestern Mexico”. Geoforum 84(1): 151-157.
Radonic, Lucero and Thomas E. Sheridan. 2017. “Co-producing waterscapes: Urban growth and indigenous water rights in the Sonoran Desert”. In The U.S.-Mexico Transborder Region: Cultural Dynamics and Historical Interaction. Carlos Velez-Ibañez and Josiah M. Heyman, eds. Pp. 287-304. Tucson: University of Arizona Press