Alissa Settembrino

A Spanish and music educator, Alissa Settembrino finds creative and engaging ways to integrate her music and language background into her teaching. She previously worked as a band director in New Jersey, where she promoted bilingualism in the music department to serve the community’s language diversity. Alissa holds a BM in Music Education from Ithaca College, and master’s degrees in Ethnomusicology (MM) and Latin American Studies (MA) from the University of Arizona where she held a Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Fellowship. During her time at UofA, Alissa also taught undergraduate Spanish courses in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

Alissa is a former recipient of the Medici Scholar Fine Arts Award, which sponsored her field research in Guayaquil and Quito for her first master's thesis titled "Hybridized Folklore through Restoration: Examining Modern Band Pedagogy in Ecuador's American & International Schools." She is also a two-time recipient of the Tinker Field Research Grant to fund her prior field research in Ecuador and in Costa Rica. Alissa's current work examines engagement with music and sound among elders and centenarians in the Latin American Blue Zone of Nicoya, Costa Rica. Her fieldwork throughout the peninsula has contributed to creating a new area of Blue Zone research, as well as further promoted music and wellbeing practices in Latin America.