Daniel Cole
Professor, Maurer School of Law and School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Research interests: Climate change, property systems, resource governance, pollution control.
James Robert Farmer
Associate Professor, School of Public and Environmental Affairs
Research interests: Community food systems, sustainable agriculture, natural resources and protected areas, conservation/sustainability environmental, sustainable behavior, rural landscapes and people, community based participatory research, institutional analysis.
Associate Professor of Environmental Health
Luis Fernando Chaves is an associate professor in the IU School of Public Health-Bloomington Department of Environmental and Occupational Health. He is also an adjunct faculty in the Department of Geography, and he is also affiliated with the Ostrom Workshop and the Tobias Center for Innovation in International Development. Abroad he is an associate researcher at the Gorgas Memorial Research Institute of Panama and an external faculty in the Entomology Masters at Universidad de Panama. Dr. Chaves has been studying insect vectors and the diseases they transmit since he was an undergraduate in Venezuela. He is interested on the impacts of climate, land use land cover change and other aspects of environmental and social change on vector-borne diseases. For his research he combines entomological field studies, geographical information science, remote sensing, data science and mathematical and statistical modelling. Dr. Chaves teaches graduate classes about climate change, GIS and Remote Sensing for Public Health and Geographical Data Science. Dr. Chaves also mentors both graduate and undergraduate students interested in doing research on insect vectors and the diseases they transmit. He has over 25 years of international experience having completed research projects in 14 different countries, publishing over 150 research papers (including in high impact journals), several book chapters, co-authoring one book and currently editing a book about vector-borne diseases, uneven development and land use land cover change. For his academic achievements Dr. Chaves has been recognized as Climate and Health Scholar by the NIH, Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Darren Ficklin
Assistant Professor, Geography
Research interests: Watershed hydrology. Surface water, ground water, and water quality modeling. Examining the effects of climate change on aquatic species ecosystems. Drought modeling and assessment.
Brian J. Gilley
Professor, Anthropology
Gilley works on the relationship between heritage, food, and environment. Projects include work on taste and heritage on the island of Ishcia, Italy, and family-run gastronomy businesses in Salerno, Italy. Research interests: Italy, taste, gastronomy, food ecology, labor, island cultures.
Yuri Kim
Senior Lecturer in Geography
Dr. Yuri Kim is a geography educator who focuses on physical geosystems and geospatial analysis methods, including Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS). Her primary pedagogical research and instructional objectives are to enhance students’ engagement with fast-changing, innovative technologies in GIS and RS and to help them apply these tools to a broad spectrum of research and industry needs. Dr. Kim teaches classes at various levels, from first-year undergraduates to graduate students. She also mentors students on diverse research projects and has expanded her teaching-related service within the university to include K–12 and higher-level lifelong education in Indiana.
Stacie King
Chair, Anthropology
King's research focuses on the peoples of Oaxaca, Mexico, between 1500 B.C. to the present. She is particularly interested in how people in the past negotiated their place in the social, political, and economic world around them. King is interested in the ways that people figure out and creatively construct who they are, how they materially mark themselves in different social settings, and how they experience life as people with multiple overlapping and intersecting social identities. Research interests: Ancient and colonial Mexico, household archeology, identity, food practices, soundscapes, social theory, colonialism, soil chemistry, and microsale methods in archeology. Geographical areas of specialization: Mexico (Oaxaca), Mesoamerica.
Associate Professor, Anthropology
My research takes an interdisciplinary and collaborative approach to study the relationships between people and the environment, especially in times of political, economic, and ecological disturbance. For over two decades, I have worked with smallholder vanilla, clove, and rice farmers in northeastern Madagascar, investigating how agroforestry landscapes support ecological diversity, political memory, and cultural meanings. I have also investigated how commodity boom and bust cycles affect local environmental, economic, and social relationships, including the increase in vigilante violence events. In my research and teaching, I connect ethnographic data with broader questions of sustainability and resilience, asking how societies can better cultivate sustainable and equitable landscapes moving forward. Currently, I am examining the links between cultural and ecological resilience and restoration, especially in post-disaster and post-conflict contexts. As a component of this research, I am collaborating with colleagues at the University of Duhok in Northern Iraq to take a cultural-ecological approach to restoration in the wake of political violence and climate change. My research has been supported by organizations including the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Lewis B. Cullman Foundation, the Yale Program in Agrarian Studies, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Thomas J. Watson Foundation, and the Faculty Fellows program at Dumbarton Oaks, Harvard University.
Assistant Professor in Geography
Julio C. Postigo, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography. Julio’s research focuses on understanding the interactions between environmental change and economic development in remote rural territories. He is particularly interested in understanding (1) how communities draw on their social institutions and local knowledge to navigate the synergistic impacts of climate change and capitalism; (2) conversion of arid lands into productive spaces; and (3) leveraging this understanding to inform effective policymaking. Because of his expertise on the impacts of climate change in Latin America, he was selected to contribute to the 6th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report, serving as a Lead Author of the chapter Central and South America and Contributing Author on several additional chapters. Postigo has received Indiana University 20204-2025 Outstanding Junior Faculty Award. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation. He has also edited three books on the impacts of global change in Latin America and published numerous peer reviewed publications. Beyond his time in academia, Postigo also worked for the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), where he gained valuable experience crafting policy on national and international stages.
Assistant Professor of International Studies
Dr. Lucía Isabel Stavig is a medical anthropology and an Assistant Professor of Global Health Governance in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, within the Department of International Studies at Indiana University Bloomington. A Peruvian American scholar, Lucía has had the honor of learning with Indigenous communities across Turtle Island and Abya Yala, including Tzotzil and Tzeltal Maya peoples in Chiapas, Mexico; the Rama people in Nicaragua; the Ñhäñhú (Otomí) in Hidalgo, Mexico; the Kainai (Blackfoot Confederacy) in southern Alberta, and Runa (Quechua) peoples of the Cusco region. Lucía’s research explores how Indigenous peoples’ struggles for health and wellbeing are also political defenses of their lands and more-than-human relations. Specifically, her work in reproductive and Indigenous justice follows the efforts of First peoples—from southern Canada to southern Peru—to heal from colonial reproductive violences, including forced sterilization and contraception, obstetric violence, land loss, and ecosystem degradation to create Indigenous futures for generations to come.
Associate Professor in Second Language Studies
David Stringer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Second Language Studies, Indiana University. His current research is in the areas of language acquisition, environmental linguistics, and biocultural diversity conservation. This interdisciplinary work seeks to link language revitalization in Indigenous societies to the conservation of ecosystems.
Associate Professor, Anthropology
Michael Wasserman is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Human Biology, P.I. of the Primate Environmental Endocrinology Lab (PEEL), and Director of the Human Biology Program at Indiana University Bloomington. From 2013-16, he was Assistant Professor of Environmental Science and Policy at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas. Prior to that, he was a Tomlinson Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Anthropology at McGill University in Montreal. He received his PhD in 2011 from the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. His undergraduate degrees are in Anthropology (BA) and Zoology (BS) from the University of Florida. Michael’s research interests include primate ecology and evolution, environmental endocrinology, and conservation and sustainability. He is currently examining ecological and evolutionary relationships between wild primates and exogenous chemicals that interact with the endocrine system, including naturally-occurring phytosteroids and anthropogenic pesticides. Most of his research takes place in Kibale National Park, Uganda, and La Selva Biological Station, Costa Rica, although he also advises PhD students working in India and Madagascar. Michael serves on the Board of Directors of the Organization for Tropical Studies and ran a National Science Foundation International Research Experience for Students program from 2016 to 2023 focused on the effects of environmental policies, conservation incentives, and land use patterns on primates across Costa Rica and Uganda. Research from this program have informed his current NSF Dynamics of Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems project focused on pesticide use around Kibale National Park.