Find out more about our winter program exploring the Tiputini Biological Station in the Yasuni National Park in the Amazon in Ecuador. Tropical forests have a stunning array of diversity, and adaptations to strong species interactions, while species in alpine ecosystems have highly-specialized adaptations to challenging environmental conditions. To study this gradient, students will embark on a field course spanning multiple biogeographic regions in Ecuador, a region that boasts some the highest degrees of species diversity and endemism. This program will involve travel in January to the Amazon followed by synthesizing those field observations fduring the first seven weeks of spring upon return.

Join us this summer to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.

Join us this summer to practice your language skills and meet new people. Conversation Hours provide an opportunity to use the target language in an informal, low-pressure atmosphere. Have fun practicing a language you are learning! Gain confidence through experience! Just using your new language skills helps you learn more than you might think. Conversation Hours are open to any learner, including the public.

Urbanism, Economy, and Governance at Teotihuacan, Mexico

The early Mexican metropolis of Teotihuacan was the largest city in the Americas of its day (ca. 100 BCE – 600 CE) and is one of the most visited archaeological sites in the hemisphere today. Although it has undergone over a century of investigations, much of the city’s urban social organization has come into focus over only the last few decades and major questions remain unresolved concerning its political economy and system of governance. In this presentation I draw from my own research at four parts of the city—the Moon Pyramid, Tlajinga district, Plaza of the Columns, and Great Compound—and synthesize work of other colleagues to provide a perspective on Teotihuacan’s unique apartment living, modular social organization, and mix of commercial and institutional economies.

David Carballo is Professor of Anthropology, Archaeology, and Latin American Studies at Boston University. He earned his BA in Political Science from Colgate University (1995) and his PhD in Anthropology from UCLA (2005). Carballo specializes in the archaeology of Latin America, especially central Mexico, but has also conducted research in Honduras, Belize, Peru, and the US, with topical interests in households, urbanism, religion, social inequality, and working with contemporary communities in understanding ancient ones. Current investigations focus on Teotihuacan’s Tlajinga district, a cluster of non-elite neighborhoods on the periphery of the city, and the Great Compound, hypothesized to have served as its central marketplace or as an administrative complex. Recent books include Urbanization and Religion in Ancient Central Mexico (2016), Teotihuacan: The World Beyond the City (ed., 2020), Collision of Worlds: A Deep History of the Fall of Aztec Mexico and the Forging of New Spain (2020), Collective Action and the Reframing of Early Mesoamerica (2024), and Teotihuacan: A Social History of a Sacred City (2027).

Rights of Nature represents a groundbreaking shift in environmental protection — a legal framework that recognizes rivers, forests, and other natural entities as having inherent rights to exist, flourish, and remain clean. This transformative model emerged in the Global South, led by Ecuador, the first country to enshrine Rights of Nature in its constitution. It has since inspired movements and legal debates worldwide, redefining the relationship between people and the planet.

Join us for a special Keynote in which lawyers, civil society activists, and academics discuss how Rights of Nature is being interpreted and applied in the courts of Ecuador and Colombia. They will also explore the challenges this paradigm faces and highlight the opportunities it creates for strengthening environmental protection and advancing sustainability. The conversation offers a rare, frontline look at the evolving global dialogue on environmental justice.

This work is part of a collaboration between the Ashley School of Global Development and Environment at Cornell and the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador. It is supported by a Cornell Global Hubs seed grant and the Polson Institute for Global Development.

Open access background reading: Special Issue: Integrating Ecology, Law, and Society to Protect the Environment. Journal of Integrated Global STEM: People, Technology and Policy. 3(1). Warner and Martínez-Moscoso (2026).

Register and see the full list of panelists.