Virginia Nazarea, Ph.D.
Anthropology
Phone: (706) 542-3852
vnazarea@uga.edu

My research focuses on human cognition and behavior in relation to development and conservation. I am concerned with the situatedness of local knowledge and its distribution according to ethnicity, age, class, and gender. I have explored how this internal differentiation leads to a political ecology of cognition that on one hand shapes development trajectories and conservation strategies but on the other engenders its own forms of marginality and resistance. I am pursuing related questions on the cultural and political dimensions of biodiversity revolving around memory and countermemory, sovereignty and sense of place. I would like to trace the implications of these aspects of culture and biodiversity on physical, mental, and spiritual health, human development, and well-being.

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