UCR

The University of California, Riverside

Human Ecology Programs

I am emeritus faculty, but still around and doing some teaching, at the University of California, Riverside, where I am fortunate to have several kindred spirits in my home department (Anthropology) and in other departments, including Sociology, Political Science, Botany and Plant Sciences, and other areas. We have wonderful programs in anthropology and cultural ecology (as well as in the life sciences).

I am also associated with the Center for Conservation Biology, Michael Allen, Director.  There is also an Environmental Studies program that integrates people from social and biological sciences, including political scientists, philosophers, earth scientists, engineers, restoration ecologists…anyone interested in improving the environment. It’s a wonderful group.
Many of us in the Dept. of Anthropology do research related to cultural ecology and/or agrarian anthropology. We have a range of projects going on, and can always use more help. Several of us work in the Yucatan Peninsula with the Maya. There are possibilities for local projects.
We have a large number of faculty, in all four subdisciplines of anthropology, working with ecological and ethnobiological data. I work primarily in the area of ethnobiology. 

We also have a number of people in the area of medical anthropology, including people from cultural, linguistic, and biological anthropology–an unusually large and comprehensive medical anthropology faculty.

The Botany program attracts those interested in pharmacological matters, as well as genetic evolution, chemistry, plant ecology, and traditional economic botany (plant products, agronomy, pest control, etc.). Some brave souls major in both–we have produced one joint Ph.D. so far (but it took him many years to do it). Inevitably, students take courses and guided research work in both departments.
In Anthropology, we have several faculty members who concentrate on agriculture, cultural ecology, or ethnobiology:

– Scott Fedick (archaeology of agriculture and agricultural settlement in the Yucatan Peninsula, especially Classic Maya; also, US Southwest)

– Derek Fay (South Africa; political ecology, land issues)

– Alan Fix (Emeritus; biological anthropology, including human evolutionary ecology)

– myself (ethnobiology, political ecology; work in China and Mexico, and I have worked in British Columbia).

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