Brian Campbell (Ph.D. 2005)

Hello, My name is Brian Campbell.  I received a double BA from Truman State University in English and Anthropology.  I have conducted field research in Costa Rica, Bolivia, Ecuador and the Ozarks, MO, U.S.A.  My primary interest is sustainable resource management and how that intersects with perceptions of the environment.  My PhD dissertation research focuses on the ways in which farmers' perceptions of their environment are influenced by various forms of media and how that in turn affects their farming strategies.  While in San Julian, Bolivia, in the Amazon region, I worked at an agricultural research station focused on the dissemination of self-sufficient farming and energy recycling methods among the colonists. It was this experience that instilled my interest in agriculture and resource management.  My research interests also include media and mass communication study, ethnoecology, ethnohistory, agricultural anthropology, agroecology, and historico-political ecology.  In my spare time I like to rock climb, play darts, and brew beer.  I also like to play with plants and animals (farm) and with other humans I like to play sports like tennis, soccer, and volleyball.

Currently: Assistant Professor at University of Central Arkansas.

Todd Crane (Ph.D. 2006)

I graduated from Indiana University in 1994 with a B.A. in anthropology, as well as a degree in photojournalism. Broadly speaking, I am interested in agriculture as a point of interface between humans and their environment, though I have recently expanded to include pastoralism as well. More specifically, I am interested in local knowledge systems and their interface with scientific research in a development contexts.

At the University of Georgia, I have conducted research through the Southern Seed Legacy on the cultural and economic significance of heirloom crop varieties in the American southeast. I am currently working on my dissertation research regarding local knowledge and political ecology of soil fertility in the Malian Sahel, which is being done withing the context of SANREM-Mali. When not doing academic work, my life involves playing choctaw stickball, gardening, cooking, spinning poi, backpacking, brewing mead, and hanging out with my wife.

Publications include:

1999. Perceptions of Land Use Change in Oconee County (with H. Gurung and B. Cabrerra). Ethnoecology Lab. University of Georgia, Department of Anthropology.

2001. Ethnopedology in Central Mali. SANREM

In press. Farmers’ Knowledge and Perceptions of Soil Fertility (with Boureima Traoré). In Conflict, Social Capital and Managing Natural Resources: A West African Case Study. Keith M. Moore (ed.). CABI Press.

David Greenawalt (Ph.D. 2006)

David Greenawalt is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. He obtained a BA in anthropology and history from Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Additionally, he completed the Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development Certificate through the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia.

He recently finished conducting dissertation field work on the island of Roatan, Honduras. His research there focused on the globalization of the fishing industry, specifically the local-level socioeconomic impacts of policy decisions made at the international level.

Greenawalt’s research interests are in Central American and Caribbean anthropology, Coastal Anthropology, Ecological and Environmental Anthropology, Political Ecology, and Sustainable Development.

Greenawalt has considerable research experience and has worked on numerous research projects, including research with African-American fishers on the Georgia (US) coast, research with commercial and tourist-oriented fishers on the North Carolina coast, and market-oriented research for an applied anthropology corporation.

Greenawalt also has accrued significant teaching experience. He has served as a teaching assistant at the University of Georgia for over three years. Additionally, Greenawalt has taught classes at the University of Georgia, Appalachian State University, and Georgia Perimeter College. Courses taught included Introduction to Anthropology (four-field), Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, and a class entitled Gender, Race, and Class.

Hari Gurung (Ph.D. 2005)

Hi,

I am Hari Gurung, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Anthropology, University of Georgia Athens (UGA). I hail from the Mount Everest Country, NEPAL--a little country sandwiched between China on the north and India in the south. I am a convert anthropologist with a bachelor’s in agriculture and a master’s in agriculture economics from Assam Agricultural University in India. My disciplinary switch is primarily a result of the ecological and environmental anthropology-focused program at the Department of Anthropology; and the repute of Dr. Rhoades’ (my major professor) work on application of anthropology in agricultural research and development in a Third World context in the CGIAR (Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research) system, and his overall work on agricultural and natural resource management for sustaining development and environment.

Although my initial interest for doctoral dissertation research was to work on watershed management, during the late stages of my course work my interest grew on studying everyday American environmentalism. My dissertation research entitled Environmental perception, cognition, concern and behavior: An anthropological inquiry into everyday environmentalism in the American Southeast is being done in three counties of Georgia, viz. Athens-Clarke, Bibb and Laurens. The field research is funded by competitive research grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and The Solid Waste Association of North America-Georgia Chapter; and the data analyses and dissertation write-up by Dissertation Completion Award assistantship from the Graduate School, University of Georgia.

Before coming to the University of Georgia for my PhD in ecological and environmental anthropology, I taught undergraduates and worked in the field of agricultural research and rural development. After completion of my master’s, I taught courses in agricultural economics to undergraduates at the Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science in Nepal for a little more than four years. After this teaching stint, I worked as the Chief Socioeconomist, and Head, Outreach Research Division at LARC (Lumle Agricultural Research Center), Nepal Agricultural Research Council for a little more than seven years. For a brief stint of one and one half year, in between my coming to UGA and working for LARC, I worked for a German development agency GTZ project aimed at promoting self-help for rural development as a socioeconomic development professional; and, worked as a marketing research consultant to the Agro-Enterprise Center, Federation of Nepalese Chamber of Commerce and Industries, Kathmandu, Nepal to research and report vegetable seed marketing practices in India and Nepal along the Indo-Nepal international border.

I have a family of four, we two and our two. My hobbies include playing lawn tennis, trekking in the mountains, listening to NPR, and watching TV: football (primarily college football with a little bit of NFL), tennis, History and Discovery channels, and, believe it or not!, Bill O’Reilly and Hannity & Colmes shows on the Fox.

Currently: International Research Fellow, IRRI

Milan Shrestha

Milan Shrestha is a doctoral candidate in the Dept. of Anthropology, at University of Georgia Athens (UGA). His current areas of research focus on the human dimensions of land-use and land-cover change, integration of ethnographic methods with GIS and remote sensing applications, mountain agriculture and the environment, and vulnerability of smallholders' livelihoods. With the support of a “Dissertation Improvement Grant” received from the NSF (Cultural Anthropology), he recently completed his dissertation research that examines the human-environmental relationships in a mountain landscape in Nepal through an interdisciplinary, multi-scalar analysis of smallholder agriculture and land-use and land-cover change.

Milan is also a NASA Earth System Science (ESS) Graduate Fellow (2004-07). Before coming to UGA, he was a Robert McNamara Fellow (1999-2000) of the World Bank and worked as Sr. Research Associate with the Institute for Integrated Development Studies (IIDS) in Nepal. He received his M.A. degree from Clark University and B.Sc.Ag. degree from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He has worked as a consultant to the World Bank, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), Centre for Self-Help Development (CSD) Nepal, and a few other NGOs and INGOs in Nepal. He provides technical support to LANRA and the research projects directed by Dr. Rhoades, including the design and maintenance of web sites.

Personal website: http://milanshrestha.com

Graudate Students

Edward Reep (Ph.D.1998)
Greg Guest (Ph.D. 2000)
Neeraj Vedwan (Ph.D. 2001): Assistant Professor at the Montclair State University
Will Van de Berg (Ph.D. 2002)
Eric Jones (Ph.D.2002): at University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Chris Tarnowski (Ph.D.2002)

Post-Docs

Shankar Talawar 1996-98
Ram Chhetri 1998-99; 2002 (Fulbright on two occasions)