Introducing Professor Jessica Cattelino as the New Director of the CSW|Streisand Center
We are thrilled to announce that Professor Jessica Cattelino has been appointed as the new Director of the UCLA Center for the Study of Women|Barbra Streisand Center.
Professor Cattelino is a longtime member of the UCLA community, having joined the faculty in 2008. A Professor of Anthropology and American Indian Studies with a courtesy appointment in Gender Studies, she has been an integral part of CSW|Streisand for over a decade. Her leadership roles include serving twice as Associate Director, leading the development of CSW’s bylaws and the strategic fundraising plan in 2020-2021. As Associate Director and as a member of the Executive Committee, she has been instrumental in the establishment of the Barbra Streisand Center and the stewardship of Ms. Streisand’s gift. She is currently convening the Scholars-in-Residence Program on Feminist and Queer Ecologies.
Beginning in 2017, Cattelino collaborated with the Center for the Study of Women|Streisand Center and the Sustainable LA Grand Challenge in the research project Gender and Everyday Household Water Use in Los Angeles, an ambitious ethnographic study that tracks water usage and meanings in four LA neighborhoods. From this study, Dr. Cattelino, along with a group of graduate and undergraduate researchers, produced the “Gender and Everyday Household Water Use in Los Angeles” report. The report explores how Los Angeles—a global megacity and proving ground for urban water sustainability—grapples with critical challenges in water management not only through water policies and infrastructure but also through day-to-day life in residents’ homes. It exposes the major role of gender—as it intersects with race, class, and migration—in shaping residential water use and conservation. A feminist anthropologist, Cattelino’s broader research focuses on ecological, economic, and political interdependencies, with projects spanning Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, feminist collaboration, and the sociocultural dimensions of water. Her book, High Stakes: Florida Seminole Gaming and Sovereignty (Duke University Press, 2008; winner of the Delmos Jones and Jagna Sharff Memorial Book Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of North America), examines the cultural, political, and economic stakes of tribal casinos for Florida Seminoles. A book-in-progress, Water Ties: An Everglades Ethnography, studies rural life amidst ecosystem restoration. It focuses on how water ties people to one another and the land, as exemplified in the Florida Everglades. Relatedly, she collaborated with photographer Adam Nadel on “Getting the Water Right,” a multi-format photographic and ethnographic exhibition about the cultural politics of nature in the Florida Everglades. The exhibition was installed throughout the Everglades National Park.
Cattelino has held prominent campus-wide leadership roles, most recently serving as Chair of the Academic Senate. Previously, she drew in part on results from a survey she designed at CSW to help develop two campus research funding programs to address faculty research losses during the COVID pandemic, and to co-lead UCLA’s Post-Pandemic Research Visioning Working Group in developing its report on Envisioning Research in the Post-Pandemic University. She also chaired the Graduate Council of the Academic Senate. She is President-Elect of the Society for Cultural Anthropology.
As Director, Professor Cattelino envisions CSW|Streisand as a vital hub and, in these times, a refuge, for interdisciplinary feminist research and education, with a focus on collaborative governance, environmental justice, and integration across UCLA’s research and teaching communities. She is committed to nurturing feminist research across generations and disciplines, supporting transformative scholarship in service of social justice.
Please join us in welcoming Professor Cattelino in this new leadership role!
