María Cifre Sabater, PhD candidate in Social Anthropology research, successfully defended her thesis earlier this month. Her PhD thesis, Changing Forests in a Changing Mediterranean Island: Forests, Fires and Heritagisation of the Landscape in Serra de Tramuntana, Mallorca, is based on an extended period of fieldwork in the Mediterranean island of Mallorca which, like so many other parts of the Mediterranean and the world, has experienced a number of destructive wildfires.
Whilst forest fires have received a lot of attention from ecologists and foresters, there are very few studies that focus on their social aspects from an anthropological perspective. María’s work is pioneering in its ability to consider not only how forest fires have emerged in the context of the environmental and social history of the Serra de Tramuntana area, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but also in its contribution to the understanding of how different social actors perceive and relate to forest fires and the underlying dynamics of change, including the changes and interventions relating to the management of a protected area and the rapid growth of the services economy in the area linked to conservation, tourism and the heritage industry.
Congratulations to María, a native of Mallorca and recipient of a University of Kent Vice-Chancellor’s Scholarship, who will shortly begin her new job as a short-term consultant for the regional government, interfacing with stakeholders in the protected area, and who is looking forward to actively contributing to a better and more inclusive management of the cultural landscapes of Serra de Tramuntana in the coming years.
Main image: María Cifre Sabater with her examiners, Dr Rajindra Puri (left) and Dr Jose Antonio Cortés.