Rajindra K. Puri

Dr. Rajindra K. Puri "is an environmental anthropologist and ethnobiologist at the University of Kent. He teaches courses in Environmental Anthropology, Development Anthropology, Ethnobotany and Research Methods. Dr. Puri received his BA in Anthropology and Biology from Middlebury College in Vermont, and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Hawai'i while a degree fellow at the East-West Center Programme on Environment in Honolulu. Over the past 15 years he has been studying the historical ecology of a rainforest valley in Indonesian Borneo, documenting the ethnobiological knowledge of Penan Benalui hunter-gatherers and Kenyah swidden agriculturalists, elucidating the causes and consequences of trade in wildlife and plants, and developing theory and methods for an applied conservation social science. His most recent book is Deadly Dances in the Bornean Rainforest: Hunting Knowledge of the Penan Benalui (KITLV Press). He has also held positions as a research fellow, consultant, and trainer for the East-West Center, WWF Indonesia, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR, a CGIAR centre), the WWF/UNESCO/KEW People and Plants Initiative and Fauna and Flora International. He continues to work with colleagues at CIFOR on the Multipurpose Landscape Assessment project, developing methods to combine social and biological approaches to community-based conservation and development. He has collaborated on Global Diversity Foundation research and training projects in Morocco (Wildlife trade in Southern Morocco), and Sabah, Malaysia (Ethnobiology of proposed traditional use zones in Crocker Range Park)."


 * Managing Director, Centre for Biocultural Diversity