The core question addressed in this interdisciplinary research project is why some social-ecological systems are more successful in navigating disturbances and change in the environment than others. The project will generate a deeper understanding of how societies may become fragile as they attempt to cope with uncertainty and change in the environment.

The Global Ethnohydrology Study is a transdisciplinary multi-year, multi-site program of research that examines the range of variation in local ecological knowledge of water issues, also known as “ethnohydrology.” It will focus on showing how factors, such as increasing urbanization, water scarcity and climate change, are related to changes in cultural ideas and knowledge.

This research focuses on a series of Early and Middle Holocene cemeteries (circa 10,000-5000 years ago) from the southern Sahara Desert (Niger), where a unique record of human life and death was preserved. The project combines ongoing fieldwork with extensive archaeological and bioarcheological lab analyses.

This project explores the social diversity and the negotiation of difference in varied historical settings in Southeast Asia, particularly Thailand. More specifically, the project examines what interethnic (majority-minority) relations characterize ethnographic reporting, film, novels, memoirs and newspaper coverage during 1914-2014, compared to what we know about patterns of interethnic relations from ethnohistorical investigations.