News
I was recently interviewed by writer Kathleen Shannon about the similarities between ranchers and pastoralists as part of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. You can read the…
I joined Tip Hudson for another episode of Art of Range to talk about the February theme of the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP). Here is the description of the episode: …
The Routledge Handbook of Pastoralism that I co-edited with Igshaan Samuels, Nikolaus Schareika, and Eva Schlecht is scheduled to be published in June 2026. This handbook provides a comprehensive…
Together with other members of the Working Group on Pastoralism and Land Rights of the Global Alliance for the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP), including Flora Vern and…
Franny Lazarus from OSU News wrote a really nice piece about my involvement in the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists (IYRP). It is accompanied by two great pictures: one from Zoé L…
I was interviewed about our agent-based model of the emergence of an ideal free distribution for the Ten Minute Dialogs, a series of interviews with social and ecological model authors that focus…
Our new article is out in the journal of Agricultural and Human Values. Here is the abstract:
Livestock systems across the world are transformed by capitalist forces. Understanding these…
I contributed a 10-minute video on agent-based modeling to the NSF Cultural Anthropology Methods Program (CAMP) International Curriculum. Here is a description of the curriculum. Spanning 15…
Chelsea Hunter, one of Ohio Sea Grant’s six Knauss Fellows, didn’t originally picture herself working in the legislative branch. The Ohio State PhD student from the Department of…
We published a new paper for a special issue on rewilding for the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science. In the paper, we review three decades of studies of the Logone Floodplain to examine…
Chelsea Hunter successfully defended her dissertation Co-Managing Sovereignty: Collaborative Biodiversity Conservation and Indigenous Sovereignty in Kanaky/New Caledonia and graduated on…
We published a new paper: Moritz, Mark, Benjamin Cross, Chelsea E. Hunter. 2023. Artificial Pastoral Systems: A Review of Agent-Based Modeling Studies of Pastoral Systems. Pastoralism:…
Chelsea Hunter has been awarded a Knauss fellowship, which is a one-year paid opportunity for current and recent graduates from advanced degree programs to apply their scientific knowledge and…
We just published a new paper in Human Ecology. Moritz, Mark, Chelsea E. Hunter, Daniel C. Peart, Abigail Buffington, Andrew J. Yoak, Jason R. Thomas, Rebecca Garabed, and Ian M. Hamilton…
We published our new agent-based model in the CoMSES Computational Model Library. This purpose of this model is to understand how the coupled demographic dynamics of herds and households constrain…
In the July-August 2022 issue of American Scientist, Mark Moritz and Nicholas C. Kawa published an article: “The world needs wicked scientists.” In the article, Moritz and Kawa discuss how the…
The Council of Academic Affairs has approved the Graduate Interdisciplinary Specialization (GIS) in Wicked Sciences in their meeting on March 1, 2023. No additional level of review or approval is…
In the week of 14-18 November 2022, Nikolaus Schareika and I led a workshop on transformations in livestock systems at the School for Advanced Research (SAR) in Santa Fe, NM, which was supported…
Paul Scholte and I met with Tipton D. Hudson, Professor, Rangeland & Livestock Management at Washington State University Extension to talk about pastoralist refugees in the Far North Cameroon on…
An interdisciplinary team of staff and faculty, with Mark Moritz, Nicholas Kawa, Alison Bennett, Rachel Kajfez, Elizabeth Newton, Charlene Brenner, David Sovic, and Yolanda Zepeda has received an…
I wrote a review of Profits vs. Preservation: How can shepherds balance the social and ecological costs of livestock grazing on Naxos? for World Development Perspectives.
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Our piece The World needs Wicked Scientists was published in American Scientist. Here is the abstract: Many problems facing humanity are so daunting they seem impossible to solve. Among these…
We published a short news article for Oryx about how insecurity in the Logone Floodplain in Cameroon has driven thousands of pastoralists to seek refuge in Waza National Park in Cameroon.
Our paper The danger of a single story about Fulani pastoralists is out in the journal Pastoralism. Our critical analysis focuses on a factsheet published by the United States Commission on…
New paper in Nature Climate Change on Climate Change Adaptation and Community Autonomy from an interdisciplinary team led by Anne Pisor. Here is short summary of the argument: Communities…
Doctoral candidate Chelsea Hunter has been awarded a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant from the National Science Foundation to support her dissertation research. Chelsea's research…
I also enjoyed mystery conversation with Michael Cox on the In Common podcast about my work on open property regimes in pastoralist systems and about slow science.
I enjoyed my conversation with David Staley about my research on pastoralists and common-pool resources on the podcast Voices of Excellence, which is available on Soundcloud and iTunes.
Our paper Conservation overstretch and long-term decline of wildlife and tourism in the Central African savannas was published in Conservation Biology. Here is a short news item from Ohio State…
I have now also started publishing the data from our Modeling Regime Shifts in the Logone floodplain (MORSL), which was supported by the NSF Dynamics of Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH)…
Very excited to see that Paulo van Breugel is using the herd tracking data that we published in the Movebank data repository for educational purposes, including how to create animated maps. The…
I have joined thirty-two other buckeyes as Drake Institute Affiliates for the 2021-22 academic year. The Affiliate Program identifies and recognizes faculty, administrators, and staff dedicated to…
Our paper Training wicked scientists for a world of wicked problems is out in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications. Here is the abstract: Humanity faces a number of wicked problems, from…
On Thursday 15 July, Daniel Peart, Chelsea Hunter, Ian Hamilton, and Mark Moritz led a workshop on agent-based modeling using NetLogo for the 2021 Data Science for Women Summer Camp organized by…
Twenty-one researchers have been named to the first cohort for the Growing Research Opportunities (GRO) Academy (and I am part of that cohort!). The cohort will engage in educational sessions led…
We have published the report of our first virtual SESYNC workshop on Synthesizing Research on Pastoral Governance of Common-Pool Resources. The report summarizes the discussions…
Together with Lance Robinson, Ryan Unks, Chelsea Hunter, Gunnar Dressler, and Jürgen Groeneveld, we organized a four-day virtual workshop on Synthesizing Research on Pastoral Governance of Common…
Together with Nikolaus Schareika and Chris Brown, I published a paper in Current Anthropology on Critical Transitions from Pastoralism to Ranching in Central Africa. It is the result of a slow…
My picture Striking a Pose won 1st place in the People Category of the International Photography Exhibition of the Office of International Affairs. Here is link to the announcement of the…
A team led by Inés Valdez (Political Science) and Mark Moritz (Anthropology) is creating curriculum and tools for training data science students, researchers and professionals that consider how…
The Affordable Learning Exchange (ALX) is expanding their scope this autumn by piloting a racial justice grant. This new opportunity will support instructors who are incorporating assignments,…
Dr. Elizabeth Gardiner successfully defended her dissertation Land Privatization, Tenure Security, and Food Security in Rural Burkina Faso on Monday 17 August. The dissertation is based…
My presentation Pastoralists’ Governance of Common-Pool Resources: Working toward a Synthesis for the IASC 2020 Web Conference on African Commons is available online. It is work in…
Our awesome team just completed our second Big Game Theory summer camp for middle schoolers at the PAST Foundation. The goal of the Big Game Theory camp is to train campers to use a systems…
Our paper on Contemporary pastoralism in the Dhofar Mountains of Oman is out in the journal Human Ecology. It is one of the papers coming forth out of Lawrence Ball's dissertation research.
Our paper on the hydraulic impact of fish canals is out in the Journal of Hydrology. The lead author is Apoorva Shastry, a former graduate student from our MORSL team.
Shastry, Apoorva…
Offered by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Research Experience for Graduates (REG) grant provides supplemental funding to support the cost of a “Cultural Anthropology student’s closely…
Our paper Comparative Study of Territoriality across Forager Societies just came out in Human Ecology.
Moritz, Mark, Shane Scaggs, Craig Shapiro, Sarah Hinkelman. 2020 Comparative Study of…
Our research team was awarded a Thesiger-Oman International Fellowship by the Royal Geographical Society to study grazing pressure in the Dhofar Mountains of Oman. The team consists of Lawrence…
Our paper, Trends and spatial patterns of 20th century temperature, rainfall and PET in the semi-arid Logone River basin, Sub-Saharan Africa, has been published in the Journal of Arid Environments…
Annalee Sekulić started volunteering for the Ancient Socioecological Systems in Oman (ASOM) project as a sophomore, and soon after she found herself traveling to the Arabian Peninsula to do…
I visited Penn State University to give a talk about Insecurity and its impacts on pastoral systems in the Chad Basin in the Seminar Series of the African Studies Program and meet with…
Nikolaus Schareika and I received funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to study the diversity and dynamics of livestock husbandry systems, i.e., go beyond the categories of ranchers and…
I will present a new talk in the EED Research Seminar Series on how anthropologists use rigorous research design in ethnographic research projects in which I draw from my research with mobile…
Daniel Peart presented preliminary results from our ASOM project at the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association in Vancouver, Canada.
It's official. The National Science Foundation will support our modeling study of the demographic dynamics of herds and households in pastoral systems. The team consists of Ian Hamilton (EEOB…
Mark Anthony Arceño and I presented how we use Carmen Canvas to support transformative learning in the Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course at the Innovate Fall Showcase. We…
All the mobility data from my CAREER project has now been published in the Movebank Data Repository. Today I published the second dataset that we used to examine whether there was an ideal free…
This week, students played Go Theory in my graduate seminar on anthropological theory. The game is based on the Dutch game Kwartet, which is a more complex version of Go Fish…
My photo "Camel Culture" has been selected for the 2019 International Photography Exhibition of the Office of International Affairs. It is a picture of me taking a picture of our guide Hassan…
The workshop proposal that Lance Robinson and I put together has been accepted by SESYNC. The workshop brings together scholars and practitioners of pastoralists governance of common-pool grazing…
The IFD data from our Current Anthropology (2014) and Land Use Policy (2019) papers is published in the Movebank Data Repository.
This dataset describes the distribution of mobile…
Mark Anthony Arceño and I presented how we use Carmen Canvas to support transformative learning in the Introduction to Cultural Anthropology course at the Innovate Fall Showcase. We explained how…
Our paper Comparative Study of Pastoral Property Regimes in Africa Offers No Support for Economic Defensibility Model is out in Current Anthropology. Here is the abstract: The economic…
Our DECML team published two papers in Epidemics - one examines the role of carriers of foot-and-mouth disease in endemic contexts and the other examines the role of pastoral mobility on the…
I use Zachary Short's Grad School Essentials in my graduate seminar Theory in Cultural Anthropology to help them succeed in graduate school. Here is what students in my previous classes…
Our ASOM team just completed our first Big Game Theory summer camp at the PAST Foundation.
Our chapter Entre auto-organisation et planification dans la plaine d’inondation du Logone (Cameroun) is published in the volume Le Tchad des lacs, edited by Christine Raimond, Florence Sylvestre,…
New chapter in an edited volume Global Perspectives on Long Term Community Resource Management, edited by Ludomir Lozny and Thomas McGovern.
Our awesome research team recently visited the Innovation Lab at the PAST Foundation to run a workshop for middle-school students on systems thinking using NetLogo agent-based modeling software…
This semester, Kelly and Chris defended their dissertations and become Dr. Yotebieng and Dr. Brown. Kelly's dissertation is titled The capacity to aspire among Rwandan urban refugee women in…
Our paper Network analyses of transhumance movements and simulations of foot-and-mouth disease virus transmission among mobile livestock in Cameroon is out in Epidemics. Here is the citation and…