Kristina Douglass is an archaeologist who investigates how people, land- and seascapes co-evolve. She is the Joyce and Doug Sherwin Early Career Professor in the Rock Ethics Institute and Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at Penn State University. She is a Penn State Institutes for Energy and the Environment co-funded faculty member and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences. Douglass is also a Smithsonian Institution Research Associate. Her work is grounded in collaborations with local, Indigenous, and descendant (LID) communities as equal partners in the co-production of science, and the recording, preservation and dissemination of LID knowledge. Douglass and her collaborators aim to contribute long-term perspectives on human-environment interactions to public debates, planning and policymaking on the issues of climate change, conservation, and sustainability. Since 2011 Douglass has directed the Morombe Archaeological Project (MAP), based in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area. This territory is home to diverse LID communities, including Vezo fishers, Mikea foragers and Masikoro herders. The MAP team is made up of Velondriake LID community members, and an international group of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. The MAP is anchored at Penn State to the Olo Be Taloha Lab (@OBTLab and https://obtlab.la.psu.edu) for African Environmental Archaeology, which Douglass also directs. Douglass is a mother, singer, dancer, Capoeirista, SCUBA diver and avid gardener, all of which intersect in essential ways with her work as an archaeologist.
Sustainability Through Collaboration and Community Engagement in a Global Biodiversity Hotspot
Date & Time
Nov 15 2021
12:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Location
Registration Required Here
Department
Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment (C-PREE)
High Meadows Environmental Institute
Speaker(s)
Kristina Douglass
Audience
Open to the Public, Registration Required