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I am a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. My research interests are encompassed by three topical areas: the human ecology of Southeast Asia, sustainable mountain agriculture, and the anthropology of conservation. For my dissertation research, I plan to examine the social, economic, and environmental impact of coffee production in the Viet Nam highlands, which has increased greatly in the past decade, making Viet Nam the world's second largest exporter of coffee. The social, economic, and environmental effects of rapid development of coffee production in the central highlands of Viet Nam will form the general basis of my research.
I am interested in working in the highlands of Viet Nam to study the activity of small-scale coffee farmers. What has been the social, economical, and environmental impact from the practice of swidden agriculture to intensive coffee production? Environmental concerns with this transition include soil erosion, nutrient depletion from perpetual use of the soil, and likely decreased bird and fauna populations from its surrounding forests. In addition to the environmental impacts, I am interested in studying the socio-economic factors in the transition of the hill tribes and the influx of Kinh groups to the central highlands. The loss of forests and fallow fields to coffee production has caused tension between the hill tribes and Kinh farmers resulting in protests in 2001. The Vietnamese increase in coffee production has dramatically dropped the world market price for coffee creating financial difficulty across the highlands in general and this has been doubly so for small-scale coffee farmers.
The Vietnamese government, due to the market crash in coffee prices, has attempted to encourage coffee farmers to move away from the lower value crop Coffea robusta, to the higher value crop Coffea arabica. However, coffee farmers have been slow to switch over their crops due to the initial growth lag in coffee plants to reach peak production and viabable economic returns. An important component of my research will investigate the biodiversity of homegardens associated with highland coffee production in Viet Nam .
Before beginning my education at UGA, I received a M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (2003). My master's thesis entitled “Vietnamese Homegardens of Lincoln, Nebraska: A Measure of Cultural Continuity,” analyzed the Vietnamese Diaspora foodways through vegetable gardens. I also earned a BS in Zoology from the University of California in Santa Barbara (1996).
In addition to my interests in ethnobotany and agriculture, I have a broad array of experience in anthropology. My experiences include teaching Cultural Anthropology at the College of Eastern Utah, conduction cultural resources inventories and archiving southwest artifacts in Utah, conducting HIV transmission research as an applied anthropologist in Nebraska , and co-organizing the High Plains Applied Anthropology conference. These experiences have helped to form my holistic interests of the social and physical environment that encompasses human interaction.
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