Dr. Isabella Alcañiz is an Associate Professor of the Department of Government and Politics and Director of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center, University of Maryland (UMD).

Professor Alcañiz studies the politics of climate change, social inequality, disaster policy, and gender with a focus on Latin America and Latinx residents of the United States. Her research has been published in Global Environmental Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Cleaner Production, Water Policy, Environmental Science & Policy, World Politics, and the Latin American Research Review. Her books, The Distributive Politics of Environmental Protection in Latin America and the Caribbean (2022) and the Environmental and Nuclear Networks in the Global South: How Skills Shape International Cooperation (2016), were published by Cambridge University Press. She serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of Environmental Politics and Global Environmental Politics.

She received a PhD from the Department of Political Science at Northwestern University and a Licenciatura in International Relations from the Universidad de Belgrano (Argentina).

Dr. Alcañiz co-chairs the GVPT Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Dr. Alcañiz is a commissioner of the City of College Park Restorative Justice Commission.