Maria Anna Zazzarino is a PhD student in the Comparative Literature Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her areas of interest include extractivism and environmental justice, with a particular focus on the cultural production from Latin America and the Caribbean. At UCSB, Maria is a member of the Re-centering Energy Justice Collaborative, where she co-created the public syllabus "Energy Justice on the California Central Coast." Her articles, translations, and writing have appeared or are forthcoming in Media+Environment, Latin American Literature Today, Asymptote, and the edited volume Los paisajes del subsuelo: configuraciones, imaginarios, narrativas y espacios en las culturas del petróleo (Iberoamericana Veuvert, 2025). She has received a Fulbright Fellowship, a Huntington Library Short-Term Research Fellowship, and the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center's Dissertation Fellowship. 

Maria has also worked on a number of public-facing projects including exhibitions and literary events, including Delta Mouth Festival (Baton Rouge) and Hay Festival for Literature and the Arts (Segovia). She completed a Certificate in Public Humanities at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center with and internship at the Community Environmental Council Santa Barbata and curated the art exhibition and published the book Donde cruzan los humos espero una semilla on fossil fuel culture and the arts at La Casa Encendida, Madrid. 

At the Global Latinidades Center, Maria was the project co-coordinator of the Global Spains Workshop on Conviviality and Accompaniment Praxis, a ten-week research and practice exchange that included eight UCSB students, two Duke University students, and eighteen grassroots organizations in Madrid. Maria coordinated with Spanish and US collaborators, including the Asociación Cultural YoSoyElOtro and Duke University's Program Latino/a Studies in the Global South. Her duties included overseeing all aspects of the project, including liaising with fellows and grassroots organizations, planning communications materials, and overseeing logistics for the exchange program (housing and funding). While in Spain, Maria coordinated workshop activities and provided linguistic interpretation services for academic and activist talks. Read Maria's reflection on the Global Spains workshop here.

For US-based activities, Maria has also worked as a Spanish and English translator for multiple Global Latinidades initiatives, including audiovisual and print material.

Maria is currently a Short-Term Fellow at the Huntington Library and a Dissertation Fellow at the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center. She prepared these successful applications during the 2023 Grants and Fellowships Workshop facilitated by Global Latinidades.