Benedict Colombi

Benedict J. Colombi, Ph.D. is Faculty Director of the University of Arizona’s Graduate Interdisciplinary Programs (GIDPs) and Associate Professor of American Indian Studies and Affiliate Associate Professor of the School of Anthropology, School of Geography and Development, and School of Natural Resources and Environment. He also holds a Faculty Appointment with the Institute of Environment, a center for disciplinary and interdisciplinary environmental and climate change research at the University of Arizona. He is the Past Program Chair of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), Anthropology & Environment section, Past Faculty Fellow with The Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy, and is a Fellow with The Society for Applied Anthropology (SfAA). In 2014, he served as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar conducting ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous communities along Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula.           

His area of specialization lies at the interface of complex human-environmental problems (i.e. energy, water, agriculture, climate, fisheries, etc.). Recent publications include the book (Colombi and Brooks 2012), Keystone Nations: Indigenous Peoples and Salmon across the North Pacific (Advanced Seminar Series, School for Advanced Research Press) and a number of articles and chapters, including long-term and engaged research with the Nez Perce Tribe (Nimiipuu) about large dams, salmon, and the regional economy in the Columbia River basin. He also pursues interests in expanding his research to include Southwestern Indigenous people and watersheds (Colombi 2010; Colombi 2014; Pasqualetti et al. 2016); complimented with field studies of local-Indigenous resources/management in the United States, Canada, Russia (Thom, Colombi, Degai 2016), Iceland, Norway (Ween and Colombi 2013), Japan, and Mexico.