Earning awards through both the Undergraduate Research Scholars thesis program and Texas A&M’s Student Research Week, Lillian Haynes’s research serves as a bridge between communities, helping further conversations in Latin America and the Caribbean on cultural independence, foreign intervention, and open-access spaces. Image: Undergraduate Research Scholars Team

For Lillian Haynes, research began with memory.

Long before her work earned first place in undergraduate humanities at Texas A&M University’s Student Research Week, or Outstanding Thesis Award in Humanities, Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at the Spring Recognition Ceremony, Puerto Rico had already left a lasting mark on her life. She spent six formative years in the Caribbean, building friendships, studying alongside Puerto Rican classmates at Robinson School, and developing a deep connection to its culture. The beaches, in particular, stayed with her — not only as places of beauty and belonging, but as spaces where larger questions about access, identity and power were quietly unfolding.

Those early experiences eventually became the heart of her capstone project, “The Tide Remembers: Puerto Rican Resistance and Colonial History in the Face of Cultural Erosion.” Through the project, Haynes examines how Puerto Rico’s coastal spaces reflect the island’s ongoing struggles with colonialism, gentrification and environmental change, while also revealing how those same spaces can become sites of resistance, cultural memory and public belonging.

Rooted in Henri Lefebvre’s philosophy of “The Production of Space,” her research explores the coastal zone as a place of tension — where foreign firms seek profit, governments seek control and communities fight to preserve public access and cultural meaning. In Haynes’ work, the beach is never just a beach. It is history, home, livelihood and protest all at once.

For Haynes, choosing this subject was not simply an academic decision. It was personal.

“I developed my research project as a means of understanding how our daily spaces influence our lives,” she said, “and more so, how understanding the role of the coastal zone in Puerto Rican history, as well as the present day, can help the island obtain a more balanced sense of its independence and freedom.”

A strong connection between language, culture and scholarship is central to Haynes’ work. She is bilingual in English and Spanish; her thesis will include both English and Spanish translations, along with a mini-documentary series and photographs. 

“Her thesis is outstanding because of its interdisciplinary approach,” Haynes’ faculty adviser, Dr. Robert Carley, said during the Spring Recognition Ceremony. “An interdisciplinary approach is based entirely on open inquiry. Students ask themselves incredibly hard questions and call on other disciplines to find answers to them. You’d use a mix of interpretive and information or data-gathering approaches, like interviews and participant observation. And working within the constraints of multiple disciplines, you carefully synthesize ideas and approaches, offering a wholly new view of things. This work was valuable and rare then and even more so today, and her thesis does it really well.”

To deepen her work, Haynes returned to Puerto Rico this spring and immersed herself in the communities at the center of her research. During her fieldwork, she interviewed 15 beach activists and community partners, including members of Puerto Rican Sen. Eliezer Molina’s team. A previous summer study abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, influenced her interview process. 

While in Puerto Rico, she joined a beach protest in Isabela, traveled to Rincón to meet with a local Surfrider branch and spoke with faculty at the University of Puerto Rico. Those experiences brought her face-to-face with the people living the realities she was studying, giving her research a sense of urgency not found in books alone.

When her name was called at Student Research Week and later at the Spring Recognition Ceremony, Haynes understood that her project was much greater than the personal recognition it garnered.

“When I stepped onto both of those stages, I wasn’t just speaking on behalf of myself,” she said. “I was a voice for every resident struggling in Puerto Rico, every activist organization striving to make a difference, and every good-hearted student wanting to be an advocate for those who need it most.”

Haynes is both a university and departmental Honors Fellow in international affairs. Her thesis is part of the Undergraduate Research Scholars thesis program. She plans to share her findings with her colleagues in Puerto Rico, providing activists with an additional resource to understand the multidimensional fight on their coastal front.

She sees the award as a beginning — one that reflects the efforts of her parents, early teachers, advocates, professors and community partners who helped shape her path.

“I dedicate my research to the teachers and mentors who made a difference in my education,” Haynes said. “To my Spanish teachers, my Caribbean history professors. I honor my grandmother, Glenda “Gigi” Daley, who always encouraged my education, my late high school principal, Dr. David Mindorff, and the people of Latin America and the Caribbean who made my research possible.

A Scholar and Storyteller, Shaped by Mentors

Haynes graduated from Texas A&M this month with a degree in international affairs from the Bush School of Government and Public Service. But her academic journey is deeply influenced by the College of Arts and Sciences. She minored in Spanish and Hispanic studies through the Department of Global Languages & Cultures, an experience that shaped both her worldview and her approach to the Puerto Rico project. Her professional experiences in the College of Arts and Sciences were just as impactful, as she worked as a student writer and coordinator with the marketing and communications team, helping tell the diverse, rich stories about students, faculty and programs.

She credits two professors with leaving a lasting impact. Dr. Eduardo Espina, with whom she took three classes, encouraged her writing, strengthened her Spanish compositions and challenged her to grow as a scholar. His mentorship helped lead to her receiving the Outstanding Spanish Achievement Award in Spring 2025. She also points to Dr. Benjamin Davis, whose cultural studies course introduced her to the value of hands-on inquiry and ethnographic research, methods that later became essential to her capstone.

“My understanding and love for Spanish framed my research investigation,” Haynes said. “I wanted my work to serve as a bridge, enabling conversations surrounding the environmental and social injustices happening on the island. Through the incorporation of the Spanish language and Puerto Rican culture, my investigation can not only make a difference academically, but also in the lives of the people on the island.”

Immersed in the Aggie Experience

Outside of work and academia, Haynes served as president of TAMU UNICEF, contributor to The Eckleburg Project, and a writer for The Battalion. She presented at the 37th Annual Student Conference on Latin American Affairs and is a member of the Bush Ambassadors, representing the Bush School of Government and Public Service.

 This spring, she completed an internship as a legal assistant with the Brazos Interfaith Immigration Network and became the first graduate of Texas A&M’s Peace Corps Prep Program, having earned her Global Aggie Medallion in recognition of her global outlook and commitment to service. She also played goalkeeper for the Texas A&M Women’s Club Soccer team, which won the 2025 Southwestern Conference regional championship.

Before beginning a master’s degree at the Bush School this fall, Haynes will work as an intern for the Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas in Washington, D.C. At the Bush School, she will continue her studies in international affairs with concentrations in environmental policy, nonprofit management and Africana studies. She has already started a part-time communications job with the dean’s office to help promote the Bush School through marketing and storytelling.

A Clear Purpose Ahead

Regardless of where her path leads, Haynes’ sense of purpose is clear.

“More than anything, I am driven to work in the public and non-profit sectors to lessen developmental gaps,” Haynes said. “I want to be an advocate, whether that be through my narrative storytelling, bilingual research or humanitarian, service-oriented projects.”

Her story thus far is about the people and places that shaped her, the mentors who believed in her and the communities she hopes to serve in return.

“My research and professional aspirations have been shaped by every place my heart has called home,” she said. “Texas A&M continued to uphold the excellence found within my childhood, as Aggieland has been an invaluable resource, full of immense opportunity, most notably because of the outstanding faculty and staff that form a part of our institution. 

“This place shows us the value of an education outside of the classroom. It proves that learning does not end in a textbook. This degree is just a stepping stone to understanding the world. Once you take the initiative to apply your knowledge, that’s when the learning process truly begins.”

Source: Original story and reporting by Gauri Babele ’27, published originally by the Texas A&M University College of Arts & Sciences.