Curriculum Vitae
LAURA M. RIVAL
Personal Data
University Lecturer in Anthropology and Development
Department of International Development (qeh-ODID)
University of Oxford
3 Mansfield Rd
Oxford OX1 3TB U.K.
Email:
Phone:
laura.rival@anthro.ox.ac.uk
44-(0)1865 281 800
Academic Record
Ph.D.
M.Phil.-Q.E.
B.A. (Honours)
Social Anthropology
Social Anthropology
Anthropol & Linguistics
London – LSE, 1992
London – LSE, 1988
UBC, Canada, 1986
Academic Positions
2000 1994-2000
1993-1994
1992-1993
1991-1992
University Lecturer in Anthropology and Development, University of Oxford
Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Department of Anthropology, University
of Kent at Canterbury
Research Fellow of the Oxford Centre for the Environment, Ethics and Society,
Mansfield College, University of Oxford
Temporary Lecturer, Department of Social Anthropology, LSE, University of
London
Temporary Lecturer Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester
Other Positions
2010-2014
2009-2012
2008 2008
2006-2007
1995-2000
ESRC College Review Fellow
External Examiner, UCL, University of London
Sustainability Cttee, Linacre College, University of Oxford
Reviewer, DFID/NERC/ESRC programme on Ecosystem Services for Poverty
Alleviation (ESPA)
Invited Senior Research Fellow, LAS, Collège de France, Paris
Deputy Director of APFT Kent Programme (APFT, Avenir des Peuples des Forêts
Tropicales, a 5.000.000 € EC funded European Research Programme)
Areas of Professional Interest
Subjects
Regions
Amerindian conceptualizations of nature and society; historical and political ecology;
development and environmental policies in Latin America; indigenous peoples and
identity politics.
Amazon basin, indigenous territories in Latin America, Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil
Publications
Books
In preparation. Monograph on Latin American agro-ecology. Provisional title: An anthropological
study of Latin America’s permanent food systems.
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In preparation. New collection of essays on the Huaorani of Amazonian Ecuador. In English and
Spanish. Provisional title: Huaorani Technological Choices.
In preparation. Anthropology and Sustainability Science. Textbook for Development Studies.
Provisional title: Nature, Society and Development: An Anthropological Perspective.
In preparation. Edited volume on sustainability-enhancing institutions in Latin America. With Roldan
Muradian.
. 2002. Trekking through History. The Huaorani of Amazonian Ecuador. New York: Columbia
University Press.
. 2001. Beyond the Visible and the Material: the Amerindianization of Society in the Work of Peter
Rivière. Co-edited with Neil Whitehead. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 1998. The Social Life of Trees. Anthropological Perspectives on Tree Symbolism. Oxford: Berg.
. 1996. Hijos del Sol, Padres del Jaguar, los Huaorani Hoy (Children of the Sun, fathers of the jaguar,
the Huaorani today). Quito: Abya-Yala. (Book translation of my doctoral dissertation with a new
introduction).
Guest Editor
. 2007 [2005]. What constitutes a human body in native Amazonia? Introduction to the special issue of
Tipití on the Amazonian body. Tipití 3(2).
. 2002. Editor of the special issue of JASO (Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford)
‘Mélanges for Peter Rivière’. For which I have a written an introduction (‘The contribution of Peter
Rivière to the field of Amazonian anthropology’), and compiled a general bibliography of Rivière’s
work.
Selected articles in refereed journals
. 2010. Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT Initiative: The Old and New Values of Petroleum. Ecological Economics
Vol. 70: 358-365.
. 2008. Domestication and Diversity in Manioc (Manihot esculenta Crantz ssp. esculenta,
Euphorbiaceae). Current Anthropology 49(6): 1119-28.
. 2006. Amazonian historical ecologies. In Ethnobiology and the Science of Humankind: A
Retrospective and a Prospective. Roy Ellen (ed.). Special issue of JRAI. Pp. 97-116.
. 2005. Soul, Body and Gender among the Huaorani of Amazonian Ecuador. Ethnos. 70(3):
285-310.
. 2003. The Meanings of Forest Governance in Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Oxford Development Studies
31(4): 479-501.
. 1998. Androgynous Parents and Guest Children: The Huaorani Couvade. Curl Essay Prize,
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5(4): 619-42
. 1993. The Growth of Family Trees: Huaorani Conceptualization of Nature and Society. Man
28(4): 635-652.
Selected book chapters
. forthcg. Planning development futures in the Ecuadorian Amazon: The expanding oil frontier and the
Yasuní-ITT Initiative. In Extractive Economies, Socio-Environmental Conflicts and Territorial
Transformations in the Andean Region (Ed.) A. Bebbington. Pp.*-*. Pittsburgh, PA: University of
Pittsburgh Press.
. in press. Animism and the meaning of life: Towards an understanding of manioc domestication. In
Humans, animals, plants and things: personhood in Amazonia and Siberia (Eds) Marc Brightman,
Vanessa Elisa Grotti and Olga Ulturgasheva. Pp.*-*. Oxford: Berghahn.
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. 2010. What sort of anthropologist was Paul Rivet? In 'Out of the Study, into the Field.' Ethnographic
Theory and Practice in French Anthropology (Eds) Robert Parkin and Anne de Sales. Pp. 164-204.
Oxford: Berghahn.
. 2009. Huaorani Ways of Naming Trees. In The Ethnobiology of Mobility, Displacement and
Migration in Indigenous Lowland South America (Ed.) Miguel Alexiades. Pp. 47-68. Oxford:
Berghahn.
. 2009. Domestication of Peach Palm (Bactris Gasipaes Kunth): The Roles of Human Mobility and
Migration. [With Charles R. Clement and David M. Cole]. In The Ethnobiology of Mobility,
Displacement and Migration in Indigenous Lowland South America (Ed.) Miguel Alexiades. Pp. 117140. Oxford: Berghahn.
. 2009. Comments on M. Strathern’s Oxford Amnesty Lecture ‘Land – tangible of intangible property?
In Land Rights. Oxford Amnesty Lectures 2005 (Ed.). T. Chester. Pp. 39-46. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
. 2009. The Resilience of Indigenous Intelligence. In The Question of Resilience. Social Responses to
Climate Change (Ed.) K. Hastrup. Pp. 293-313. Copenhagen: The Royal Danish Academy of Sciences
and Letters.
. 2007. Domesticating the Landscape, Producing Crops, and Reproducing Society in Amazonia. In
Convergence and Emergence: Towards a New Holistic Anthropology? (Eds) David Parkin and Stan
Ulijaszek. Pp. 72-90. Oxford: Berghahn Books.
. 2007. What kind of sex makes people happy? In Questions of anthropology. Festschrift for Maurice
Bloch (Eds) R. Astuti, J. Parry, and C. Stafford. Pp. 167-196. Oxford: Berg.
. 2007. Proies Meurtrières et Rameaux Bourgeonnants. Masculinité et Féminité en Terre Huaorani
(Amazonie équatorienne). In Une maison sans fille est une maison morte. La personne et le genre en
sociétés matrilinéaires et/ou uxorilocales. (Ed.) Claude-Nicole Mathieu. Pp. 125-154. Paris: Ed. de la
Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.
. 2006. Partnerships for Sustainable Forest Management: Lessons from the Ecuadorian Chocó. IN
Partnerships in Sustainable Forest Resource Management: Learning from Latin America. Ros-Tonen,
Mirjam, H. van den Hombergh and A. Zoomers (eds). Pp. 37-62. Amsterdam: CEDLA. [QEH Working
Paper 116]
. 2005. From Global Forest Governance to Privatised Social Forestry: Company-Community
Partnerships in the Ecuadorian Chocó. In Privatising Development: Transnational Law, Infrastructure
and Human Rights. (Ed.) Michael B. Likosky. Pp. 253-270. Publisher: Brill Academic Publishing.
[QEH Working Paper 117]
. 2005. Huaorani, Religion and Nature. In Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. Taylor, B. General
Editor. New York: Continuum International [see also website: www.religionandnature.com].
. 2002. Formal Schooling and the Production of Modern Citizens in the Ecuadorian Amazon. In
Schooling the Symbolic Animal. Social and Cultural Dimensions of Education. (Ed.) Bradley A. U.
Levinson. Pp. 108-22. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield.
. 2001. Seed and Clone. A Preliminary Note on Manioc Domestication, and its Implication for
Symbolic and Social Analysis. In Beyond the Visible and the Material: The Amerindianization of
Society in the Work of Peter Rivière. Pp.57-80. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 2001. Forty Years of Amazonian Anthropology, the contribution of Peter Rivière. In Beyond the
Visible and the Material: The Amerindianization of Society in the Work of Peter Rivière. Co-written
with Neil Whitehead. Pp.1-18. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
. 2000. Marginality with a Difference: How the Huaorani Remain Autonomous, Preserve their Sharing
Relations and Naturalize Outside Economic Powers. In Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World:
Conflict, Resistance and Self-Determination. (Eds) Peter Schweitzer, Megan Biesele & Robert K.
Hitchcock. Pp.244-260. New York: Berghan Books.
. 1999. Introductory Essay (as Regional Editor) on South American Hunters-and-Gatherers. In The
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. (Eds) Richard Lee and Richard Daly. Pp.77-85.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
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. 1998. Domestication as a Historical and Symbolic Process: Wild Gardens and Cultivated Forests in
the Ecuadorian Amazon. In Principles of Historical Ecology (Ed.) William Balée. Pp. 232-50. NewYork: Columbia University Press.
. 1998. Preys at the Centre: Resistance and Marginality in Amazonia. In Lilies of the Field: Marginal
People who Live for the Moment. (Eds) S. Day, E.Papataxiarchis and M. Stewart. Pp. 61-79. Boulder,
Col: Westview Press.
. 1996. Blowpipes and Spears: The Social Significance of Huaorani Technological Choices. In Nature
and Society: Anthropological Perspectives. (Eds) Philippe Descola & Gísli Pálsson. Pp. 145-164.
London: Routledge.
Reports
. September 1994 – Report on Camisea oil fields for Environmental Resources Management (ERM
London).
. April 1996 - Report on Awa forestry project for ODA (Overseas Development Agency).
. August 1997 - Report on Chachi forestry project for DFID (Department for International
Development).
. September 1997 - Report on ITT oil fields for Environmental Resources Management (ERM
London).
. July 1999 - Report on Chachi forestry project for CDC (Commonwealth Development Corporation).
. July 2000 - Report on U’wa land rights and cultural construction of territorial rights for U’wa court
case against Oxy.
. July 2006. Report on impact oil development in the Province of Orellana for court case against
Texaco-Chevron.
Book Reviews
38 book reviews written between 1992 and 2009, and a review essay in 2001: Society, Culture and
Environmental Adaptability in Central and South America. Reviews in Anthropology 30: 375-386.
Details below of the latest:
June 2006. For TLS. Oakdale, Suzanne. I foresee my life. The ritual performance of autobiography in
an Amazonian community. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press. 2005.
July 2006. For JLAS. Michael Uzendoski, The Napo Runa of Amazonian Ecuador. Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press. 2005.
September 2007. For OXFAM (Journal Development in Practice, Volume 17 Issue 6, 820). Gillete Hall
and Harry Anthony Patrinos (Eds). Indigenous peoples, poverty and human development in Latin
America. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave (MacMillan). 2006.
January 2008. For JRAI. Kosek, Jake. Understories: The political life of forests in Northern Mexico.
Durham: Duke University Press. 2006.
January 2008. For BLAR. Clark, Kim A. and Marc Becker. (Eds). Highland Indians and the State in
Modern Ecuador Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. 2007.
January 2009. For Tipití. Time and Memory in Indigenous Amazonia: Anthropological Perspectives.
Carlos Fausto and Michael Heckenberger, editors. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007.
December 2010. For ODS. Payment for ecosystem services. (Eds) Kumar Pushpam and Roldan
Muradian. Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2009.
Conference organised
I have organised and/ or convened 37 conferences, workshops, panels, seminar series and round tables
between 1991 and 2010. The most significant ones are listed below:
February 2011. Convenor of the Linacre Environment Lectures. Theme: Socio-Ecological Systems and
Complexity Theory.
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June 2008. University of Oxford (Maison Française d’ Oxford) and Musée du Quai Branly (Paris).
International Conference in celebration of Claude Lévi-Strauss’ 100th Birthday and Convenor of SALSA
meeting.
July 2005. University of Oxford. Convenor of the Panel Ecological Threats and New Promises of
Sustainability for the 21st Century for Queen Elizabeth House 50th Anniversary Conference New
Development, Threats and Promises.
December 1999, University of Oxford (Linacre College). Convenor of the Festschrift for Peter Rivière
for the Franco-British Network of Amazonianist Anthropologists.
October 1997. University of Kent at Canterbury and Wye College. Wenner-Gren Workshop on The
Cognition and Representation of Living Kinds: Towards a New Ecological Anthropology.
Conference Presentations
Invited/ Keynote
29 September 2010. Animism and the Meanings of Life: Reflections from Amazonia. Keynote speech to
open the German Congress of Americanists. Regionalgruppe Südamerika der Deutschen Gesellschaft
für Völkerkunde (DGV). Marburg, Germany.
12 April 2010. Toward an Anthropology of life. Inaugural Lecture for the Sawyer Seminar on
Contested Ecologies. University of Cape Town, South Africa.
1 December 2009. Toward an Anthropology of life. Keynote speech at the Workshop Anthropology of
Biodiversity and Human Life Worlds, Dept of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo, Norway.
9 February 2009. The Resilience of Indigenous Intelligence. Invited Lecture to inaugurate the research
programme Waterworlds. Global Climate Change and Local Social Resilience. Dept of Anthropology,
University of Copenhagen, Denmark.
2 April 2008. The role of social scientists in critical civic issues. Conference on Sustaining Cultural
and Biological Diversity in a Rapidly Changing World: Lessons for Global Policy. American Museum
of Natural History, New York, USA.
Regular, Colloquia and Seminars
I have given a total of 68 presentations at conferences, colloquia, workshops and regular seminars
between 1991 and 2010.
Professional Service
2014
Nominated by ODID and DSA to serve on the Anthropology and Development sub-panel
for REF 2014.
2011-2014 Member of the Teaching Audit Committee, SSD, University of Oxford
2010-2012 Teaching Excellence Award to develop a new option on Development, Environment and
Health to be shared between 4 masters programmes, University of Oxford
2009-2010 Course Director, MPhil in Development Studies, University of Oxford
2000-2008 Convenor of the Research Methods Course, MPhil in Development Studies, University of
Oxford
2004-2006 Member of the Ethics Cttee, University of Oxford
2001-2003 Director of Graduate Studies, ODID, University of Oxford
Teaching and Supervision
Main Courses
. Foundation course in Social Anthropology, MPhil in Development Studies
. Foundation course in Social Anthropology through tutorials, MSc and MPhil in Social Anthropology
. Native Peoples of Lowland South America, Ethnography Option Course, BA in Anth & Arch, BSc in
Human Sciences, MSc and MPhil in Social Anthropology
. State, Governance and Natural Resource sin Latin America, Option Course, MPhil in Development
Studies, MSc in Global Governance and Diplomacy, MSc in Latin American Studies
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. Introduction to the Anthropology of Cultural and Biological Diversity, Option Course, BSc in Human
Sciences
Student supervision
. MPhil in Development Studies: Course Supervision for 3-6 First and Second Year Students, Thesis
Supervision for 2-4 Second Year Students
. MPhil in Social Anthropology: Course and Thesis Supervision for 1-3 First and Second Year Students
. MSc in Latin American Studies: Course and Thesis Supervision for 1-2 Students
. BA in Anth & Arch and BSc in Human Sciences: Supervision of long essays
. Occasional supervision of theses and long essays of graduate and undergraduate students in Theology,
History, and Gender Studies
Doctoral students (2002-2010)
Social Anthropology:
I. Praet (Chachi shamanism); R. Acosta (social movements and globalization); M. Wilson (agroecology
and food in Cuba); T. Kauffmann (Tibetan diaspora and development values); A. Reig (Yanomami
landscapes); H. Walker (Urarina theory of personhood and materiality); H. Parathian (primate
conservation in Colombian Amazon); S. Thomas (Ebera and AfroColombian exchanges of religious
knowledge); A. Penfield (hierarchical relations between Yekwana and Sanema, Venezuela); T. Miller
(maize diversity in lowland South America); D. Lewis (Makushi weather knowledge); G. Zurita
(Huaorani acquired and changing agriculture).
Development Studies:
K. Bauer (historical and political ecology of range management, Tibet); A. Roemer-Malher (Indian
generic drugs and WTO trade negotiations); E. Kistin (transboundary water regimes); M.
Mancina (multi-level governance of water around Lake Titicaca).
Editorial Service
. Chief-Editor of Tipití (journal of the Society for the Anthropology Lowland South America,
SALSA), 2006-2010.
. Editorial Board Member of JRAI (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, from 2001 to
2006), ODS (Oxford Development Studies, 2002-), LACES (Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic
Studies, 2004-), and JASO (Journal of the Anthropology Society of Oxford, 2000-).
Professional Activities and Affiliations
. Elected Board Member of SALSA (Society for the Anthropology Lowland South America)
from 2002 to 2006.
. Member of the EASA (The European Association of Social Anthropologists); the AAA (American
Anthropological Association); the ASA (The Association of Social Anthropologists of the Commonwealth);
SLAS (Society for Latin American Studies); and SALSA (Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South
America).
. Consultant for various International Development Agencies.
French Institute of Biodiversity (IFB).
Expert Reviewer for the
April 2011
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