Legacy & Impact

More Than a Decade of Research, Mentorship, and Community

Since 2013, the Isla Mujeres Ethnographic Field School has trained more than 100 ethnographers from more than 70 universities and colleges in the United States and internationally.

IFS participants have included undergraduates conducting their first substantial independent research, recent graduates, graduate students, researchers holding one or more master’s degrees, and participants who already held a Ph.D. They have come from major research universities, liberal arts colleges, public institutions, professional schools, and international universities, bringing interests from anthropology as well as medicine, public health, biology, environmental studies, psychology, sociology, education, journalism, history, and other fields.

What connects them is not a particular degree or academic rank. It is the opportunity to develop a serious question, investigate it through ethnographic research, and learn how human experience shapes problems that cannot be understood through disciplinary knowledge alone.

Researchers at Different Stages

IFS researchers do not all begin in the same place academically, and they are not expected to.

An undergraduate approaching independent research for the first time has different needs from a graduate student, an experienced professional, or a researcher who already holds a doctorate. Direct mentorship begins with that reality.

At the same time, all IFS participants are expected to approach research with a Ph.D.-level standard of seriousness, rigor, ethical responsibility, and scholarly purpose appropriate to their stage of development. Students are not separated into academic castes or treated as more or less important according to the degree they hold. They participate in the same research community.

The difference lies in the mentorship. Researchers are challenged from where they actually are. One student may need to develop confidence conducting interviews, keeping fieldnotes, and learning to recognize meaningful evidence. Another may be pushed toward greater theoretical sophistication, methodological independence, or more complex analysis.

The objective is not to make every researcher identical. It is to move every researcher substantially beyond where they began.

Research Across Disciplines

IFS has never been limited to anthropology majors.

Past participants have included a Colby College student combining anthropology and marine biology, a University of Wyoming student studying history and anthropology, an Indiana State University student studying journalism and anthropology, and a participant from the School of Medicine at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

That disciplinary range reflects a central principle of the Field School. Many of the most important research problems do not belong to a single discipline.

Environmental conservation may begin with biology, but it quickly becomes connected to tourism, livelihoods, regulation, communication, business practices, public behavior, and competing ideas about environmental responsibility. Health problems involve medicine and epidemiology, but they also involve families, institutions, trust, stigma, education, access to care, and cultural understandings of illness.

Ethnography allows researchers to investigate those human dimensions.

Institutions Represented at IFS

The institutions below have been represented by students and researchers who participated in IFS. The list is based on available program records and is not intended to be an exhaustive historical roster.

United States

Appalachian State University; Baylor University; Brandeis University; California State University, Long Beach; California State University, Los Angeles; California State University, San Bernardino; Canisius University; Claremont McKenna College; Clemson University; Colby College; College of Charleston; East Central University; Franklin Pierce University; George Washington University; Hampshire College; Hendrix College; Indiana State University; Indiana University Indianapolis; James Madison University; Kenyon College; Kent State University; Lake Superior State University; Louisiana State University; Luther College; Millersville University; Montclair State University; Northern Arizona University; Oakland University; Purdue University; Rollins College; St. Mary’s College of Maryland; Syracuse University; Texas A&M University; The New School; The Ohio State University; University of California, Irvine; University of California, Riverside; University of Central Florida; University of Chicago; University of Hawaiʻi; University of Illinois Chicago; University of Iowa; University of Louisiana at Lafayette; University of Michigan; University of New Mexico; University of Northern Iowa; University of Notre Dame; University of Rhode Island; University of South Florida; University of Texas at San Antonio; University of Wisconsin–La Crosse; University of Wyoming; Utah State University; Washburn University; Washington University in St. Louis; Wells College; West Virginia University; Western Kentucky University; and Whitman College.

Canada

MacEwan University; McGill University; and Saint Mary’s University, Halifax.

United Kingdom

University of Bristol; University of St Andrews; and University of Sussex.

Australia

Australian National University; University of Adelaide; University of Queensland; and University of Sydney.

Greece

National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, School of Medicine; and Panteion University.

Türkiye

Yeditepe University.

The Island as Client

IFS students are taught to think of Isla Mujeres as their client.

Research is not conducted simply to satisfy an academic requirement or produce a paper. Whenever appropriate, IFS projects draw upon the principles of applied anthropology: using research not only to understand a problem, but to produce knowledge that may be useful to the people, institutions, organizations, and communities living with that problem.

Students are therefore asked to think beyond, What do I want to study? They are also asked, How can I use my science to help my client?

That does not mean arriving on the island believing that the researcher already knows what people need. Applied research begins by listening. Students learn to recognize local expertise, speak with stakeholders, work with cultural consultants, and allow community knowledge to influence both the questions they ask and the ways those questions are investigated.

The goal is research that is academically serious while remaining attentive to how its findings might contribute to better understanding, health, conservation, education, communication, policy, tourism, business, or other community concerns.

Research Built Through Relationships

IFS research is collaborative and community-based.

The Field School does not arrive each summer at an unfamiliar research site and begin again from zero. IFS Director Dr. Todd G. Pierce has lived full-time on Isla Mujeres for more than fifteen years. The research participants, cultural consultants, business owners, health professionals, environmental advocates, educators, artists, community leaders, and other stakeholders with whom students work are part of the community he calls home.

Many stakeholders know IFS. Some have worked with previous students. Others have become continuing collaborators or cultural consultants. Important contacts are often approached before students arrive, allowing conversations with islanders to contribute to the development of the research itself.

Relationships established during one project can therefore become part of the foundation for another. A participant in one study may later become an advisor or collaborator in a different project. An organization may help a new researcher understand the history of an issue or identify questions that would be difficult for an outsider to recognize.

The Isla Mujeres Diabetes Clinic provides one example of this continuity in community health. Environmental organizations such as Acción Isla provide another. The ethnographic record grows over time, but so do the relationships that make that research possible.

A Continuing Relationship With Isla Mujeres

Those relationships often continue after students leave the island.

Many islanders look forward to the arrival of new IFS researchers each summer. They are interested in meeting the students, hearing about their projects, and learning what new questions the cohort is bringing into the field.

The relationships students create and nurture during fieldwork frequently outlast the formal research period. Students and islanders continue conversations by phone and text. They follow one another on Facebook and Instagram, keep up with each other’s lives, exchange news, and often remain in contact as friends.

Former students return to Isla Mujeres for vacations, follow-up visits, or continued research. Some return years later with partners or families and reconnect with people they originally met through their projects.

For researchers who return to continue their work, the difference can be substantial. They are no longer strangers introducing themselves for the first time. Previous participants remember them. Trust has had time to develop. Conversations can become more open, relationships closer, and the ethnographic understanding deeper.

For IFS, the field is therefore not simply a location where data are collected. It is a community of relationships through which knowledge develops over time.

Building on the Research That Came Before

The continuity of IFS research also exists in the scholarly record.

Some students pursue questions no previous IFS researcher has examined. Others become interested in subjects that have already generated substantial research and choose to take that work further.

Diabetes is one of the clearest examples. IFS students have conducted three major ethnographic research projects concerning diabetes on Isla Mujeres. Later researchers have been able to engage with questions, findings, community relationships, and scholarly work developed through earlier studies and ask what has changed, what remains unresolved, and what new questions should come next.

That creates a very different research opportunity from simply repeating the same topic.

A new researcher can begin by asking what earlier students learned, where the earlier research left gaps, how community circumstances have changed, and whether previous interpretations still hold. The new project becomes another stage in an accumulating ethnographic record.

The same possibility exists wherever IFS has developed sustained work. Students can build upon earlier scholarship without simply reproducing it.

Research That Grows With the Researcher

Sometimes the research develops across the academic career of the same student.

IFS students have used research conducted on Isla Mujeres as the basis of an undergraduate senior thesis and later returned to expand the same line of inquiry for a master’s thesis.

When that happens, the researcher returns with more academic training, greater theoretical knowledge, improved methodological skills, and new questions. Earlier findings can be reconsidered. New evidence can be gathered. A project that began as undergraduate research can become a more sophisticated graduate inquiry.

The community relationships surrounding the work can mature as well. Previous research participants and collaborators are often happy to see returning students. Conversations resume rather than starting over, and greater familiarity can result in more candid, detailed, and nuanced exchanges.

A research participant in an undergraduate project may later become an important collaborator in graduate research. A summer project may become a senior thesis. A senior thesis may grow into a master’s thesis, conference presentation, publication, or longer research agenda.

For some students, IFS becomes the beginning of a continuing relationship with a place, a community, and a body of scholarship.

From Students to Colleagues

The relationship between IFS and its researchers often continues as well.

Dr. Pierce remains in contact with many former IFS students and has collaborated with alumni on conference presentations and scholarly publications. In some cases, the mentoring relationship has continued into graduate education, including service on graduate committees and in chair roles.

At the conclusion of the Field School, Dr. Pierce tells participants that they are no longer simply his students. They are now colleagues.

That is more than a ceremonial statement. Former IFS researchers become part of an expanding professional community. They continue conversations about research, graduate school, publishing, conferences, careers, and new projects. Some return to the island to continue their work. Others maintain connections with IFS while pursuing research and professional lives elsewhere.

The end of the summer does not have to mean the end of mentorship or collaboration.

More Than a Research Team

The relationships students form with one another can be just as enduring.

Conducting fieldwork together involves more than attending the same class. Students live within the same community, exchange ideas, help one another solve research problems, share discoveries, work through uncertainty, and experience the intensity of field research together.

Those experiences can create relationships that are meaningful well beyond the program itself.

In one year, the entire previous cohort returned to Isla Mujeres together for a reunion, traveling from different parts of the United States as well as from England and Australia. They met the incoming students, shared advice about research and island life, introduced them to islanders they knew, and helped connect one generation of IFS researchers with the next.

Many former students have remained close friends. They visit one another, travel together, take vacations together in different parts of the world, and continue friendships first formed while conducting research on Isla Mujeres.

IFS students therefore form more than a research team. For many participants, they form real, meaningful, and transformative relationships that continue across years, countries, careers, and stages of life.

Research at IFS Since 2013

The breadth of IFS research reflects both the complexity of Isla Mujeres and the interests of the students who have worked there. The subjects below represent only a sample of the research conducted since 2013.

Health, Medicine & Well-Being

Health has been one of the strongest continuing areas of IFS research. In addition to the three major diabetes projects, students have investigated dengue fever, community responses to infectious disease, tourist perspectives on COVID, breast cancer awareness and education, teenage pregnancy, women’s health, exercise, physical activity, body image, and alcohol misuse.

These studies have examined much more than particular diagnoses or health conditions. Researchers have explored how people understand illness, where they obtain information, how health education is communicated, how families and institutions shape behavior, and how cultural expectations influence decisions about health and well-being.

Tourism, Economy & Public Life

Tourism affects nearly every dimension of contemporary life on Isla Mujeres, making it a continuing context for student research. Projects have examined tourism and the local economy, tourism and politics, tourist perspectives on drinking and driving, tourism awareness and behavior, and the relationship between tourism and everyday community life.

Rather than treating tourism simply as an industry, IFS researchers have examined it as a social force capable of shaping employment, relationships, public behavior, perceptions of place, cultural representation, and the ways visitors and residents understand one another.

Environment, Conservation & Sustainability

Environmental projects have examined beach conservation, coral reef conservation, whale shark conservation, and sea turtle conservation. Researchers have studied sunscreen and reef-safe sunscreen in relation to tourist awareness and reef protection, as well as the use of single-use plastics such as Styrofoam food containers, disposable cups, and other forms of restaurant packaging.

The plastics research incorporated tourist attitudes, restaurant practices, business concerns, and efforts to reduce plastic waste. Projects such as these demonstrate how an apparently environmental problem quickly becomes connected to tourism, regulation, economics, communication, convenience, policy, and human behavior.

Migration, Mobility & Community Change

Students have investigated Cuban immigration and Argentinian immigration to Isla Mujeres and the ways migration affects employment, social relationships, identity, belonging, and the changing composition of the community.

These projects provide a way to understand how an island community is shaped by regional and international movement and how newcomers become incorporated into existing economic and social networks.

Education, Language & Learning

Research has examined education, comprehension and learning, English-language acquisition among local residents, and the Maya language.

English-language research has been particularly relevant within an international tourism economy in which language can affect employment, education, communication, and interactions between residents and visitors. Other projects have considered Maya language in relation to culture, identity, schooling, and cultural continuity.

Culture, Religion & Heritage

IFS researchers have studied religion, Maya religion, Maya cultural identity, and interpretations of the goddess Ixchel.

Some projects have examined differences between local and tourist understandings of Ixchel, Maya culture, and Maya religion. These studies allow students to investigate how cultural symbols, beliefs, and heritage can take on different meanings depending upon who is interpreting them and in what context.

Arts, Identity & Creative Economies

Students have examined tattooing in relation to tourism, the local economy, and broader national perceptions of tattooing and art. Other research has focused on musicians and music artists working on Isla Mujeres.

These projects demonstrate how creative expression can simultaneously involve identity, livelihood, tourism, cultural representation, social perception, and participation in a local economy.

Identity, Community & Social Life

Research has included LGBTQ+ issues, poverty, ideas of home and homelessness, contentment and satisfaction with life, community belonging, and everyday social relationships.

One project explored ideas of home and homelessness in a community where conventional forms of visible homelessness are relatively uncommon. The research opened a broader inquiry into security, belonging, material circumstances, and what people themselves understand it to mean to have a home and to be content with life.

Human–Animal Relationships

IFS research has examined relationships between residents and their dogs, including the difference between local patterns of ownership and care and tourist assumptions that free-roaming dogs are necessarily abandoned or homeless.

The project illustrates something ethnography does particularly well. A researcher can begin with something that appears obvious, ask how people living within that situation understand it, and discover that outsiders and residents may be interpreting exactly the same reality in very different ways.

Disasters, Disease & Community Resilience

Students have examined hurricanes and other natural disasters as well as COVID and other disease responses on Isla Mujeres.

These projects have investigated not simply the disaster or disease itself, but the ways residents, businesses, institutions, tourists, and community networks respond to disruption. They connect ethnography with public health, disaster research, governance, tourism, resilience, and community organization.

New Questions and Continuing Questions

This research history is not a menu of subjects future students are expected to select from.

Some researchers arrive with interests that connect naturally to work IFS has already conducted. Those students may be able to enter an existing ethnographic record, learn from previous scholarship and community relationships, and take a continuing question in a new direction.

Other researchers bring questions that IFS has never studied before.

Both are important.

The value of more than a decade of research is not that future students should repeat the past. It is that they can enter a research environment where previous scholarship, long-term community relationships, and accumulated knowledge are available when relevant, while entirely new areas of inquiry remain possible.

Each new researcher contributes another piece to that record.

More Than a Summer Field School

Over more than a decade, IFS students have studied health, conservation, tourism, migration, language, education, religion, identity, art, environmental sustainability, disasters, human–animal relationships, and many other aspects of life on Isla Mujeres.

They have conducted first research projects, written senior theses, returned for graduate research, presented at professional conferences, published scholarly work, collaborated with one another, built friendships across continents, and maintained relationships with islanders long after their original projects ended.

The subjects change. The students change. The questions change.

What remains consistent is an approach to ethnography grounded in serious inquiry, direct mentorship, ethical relationships, collaboration, adaptability, and respect for the people whose knowledge makes the research possible.

IFS begins with a question. Over time, however, it can become something larger: a growing scholarly record, a network of community relationships, a professional community of former students and colleagues, and an ongoing conversation between researchers and the island they have been invited to understand.

Whenever possible, that work returns to the same applied question:

How can we use our science to contribute to the community that made the research possible?

Isla Mujeres landscape and field context