Richard Stoffle

As an applied cultural anthropologist I have spent my professional career trying to understand human problems and provide systematic research findings that may be used to reduce these problems. For the past four decades my applied research has contributed to Social Impact Assessment studies, which are normally a component of a Environmental Impact Assessment that is required under National Environmental Policy Act. In more recent years my study team has focused on environmental studies with special emphasis on issues of traditional communities co-adapting with their environment and the resilience of these communities to withstand perturbations.

During these four decades I have worked with more than one hundred American Indian tribes, rural peoples in Kentucky, Scandinavian folk fishers on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, and various peoples in the Caribbean including those on the islands of Barbados, Antigua, the Dominican Republic, and most recently the traditional people of the Bahamas.

I teach various courses in various departments including Social Construction of Knowledge in the School of Information Research and Library Science, Ethnography of North American cross listed in Anthropology and American Indian Studies, Ecological Anthropology in Anthropology, a graduate seminar in Arid Lands, and undergraduate and grad courses in the Caribbean. I enjoy teaching Honors classes and was recognized as an Outstanding Honors Faculty in 2004.