Assistant Director of Educational Programs & Chair Curriculum Committee

Director, The Africa Center

Professor, Department of Anthropology

Dr. Kathleen Galvin is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology, and Senior Research Scientist at the Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. She is co-director of the Institute for Society, Landscape and Ecosystem Change. She serves as Advising Faculty for the Department of Sociology and the Graduate Degree Program in Ecology at CSU.  Trained as a biological anthropologist (Ph.D., State University of New York-Binghamton; M.A., B.A. Colorado State University) she has conducted interdisciplinary human ecological research in Africa and for the past 20 years and more recently in Kazakhstan. She is interested in issues of pastoral land use, conservation, climate variability and resilience and adaptation strategies of pastoral populations. Her current research explores the dynamics of the coupled natural and human system of the Greater Serengeti Ecosystem. She examines the importance of spatial complexity and the costs of fragmentation of pastoral ecosystems around the world. This has resulted in the 2008 publication of the book, Fragmentation in Semi-Arid and Arid Landscapes. Consequences for Human and Natural Systems (Galvin et al., eds, Springer)  She is currently leading a group to investigate pastoral household decision-making under uncertainty such as climate change across sites around the world.