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ABOUT ME

I am a sociocultural anthropologist who focuses on how people experience and respond to environmental change in the western Bolivian highlands. I finished my dissertation at the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia in 2017. My dissertation work, supervised by Gastón Gordillo, explores how people in an agricultural community in the Andean highlands of western Bolivia experience and respond to climate change and other environmental problems and how these experiences and responses are reflected in local politics. I contextualize these environmental problems within other changes occurring across broader geographies, including Bolivia’s rapid economic growth, political transformations, new development projects, and spatial linkages formed by migration to other areas. I also look at how farmers in my field site experience and respond to the explosion of the global quinoa market, which has presented them with new economic opportunities but comes at a time that agricultural land in the area is degraded from overuse and polluted irrigation water.

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The next phase of my research will entail tracing out the different trajectories of politics, materials, and infrastructures that met in the recent Lake Poopó disaster, which left Bolivia's second largest lake dry at the end of 2015.

EDUCATION

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Environmental anthropology

Climate change

Place and space

Affect and the body

Political ecology 

Environmental justice 

Indigeneity

Latin America

Bolivia 

Andean indigenous communities

2017

Ph.D. Sociocultural Anthropology

University of British Columbia

2004

B.S. Social Sciences

California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

RESEARCH INTERESTS

AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS, AND GRANTS

2017 - Canadian Anthropology Society / La Société Canadienne D’Anthropologie (CASCA) Outstanding Graduating Anthropology Student Award

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2016 - 2017 - UBC Dept. of Anthropology, PhD Thesis Writing Award

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2013 - 2016 - Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

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2013 - 2014 - Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Dissertation Fieldwork Grant

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2013 - 2014 - Liu Institute for Global Issues, University of British Columbia, Bottom Billion Fieldwork Fund

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2013 - 2014 - Faculty of Arts, University of British Columbia, Arts Graduate Research Award

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2012 - 2016 - University of British Columbia, Four Year Doctoral Fellowship

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2011 - 2012 - University of British Columbia, Graduate Entrance Scholarship

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2011 - 2012 - University of British Columbia, International Tuition Award

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

Current Positions:

2018 - Sessional Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University.

2018 - Sessional Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, Surrey.
 

Past Positions:

2018 - Sessional Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia (UBC).

2018 - Sessional Instructor, Anthropology

Columbia College, Vancouver.

2011 - 2016 - Teaching Assistant, Department of Anthropology, University of British Columbia (UBC).

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2012-2013, 2015-2016 -  Teaching Assistant Training Co-Coordinator, Department of Anthropology, UBC.

         

© 2017 by Clayton Whitt. Proudly created with Wix.com

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