The Socio-Ecology of Swidden Agriculture: A Quantitative Perspective
This presentation will feature Shane A. Scaggs, President’s Postdoctoral Scholar at the Health and Environment Modeling Laboratory (HEALMOD) at Ohio State.
About
The Biostatistics seminar series invites researchers from across the nation to discuss methodological research and its implications for a variety of health issues.
Abstract
In this seminar, I introduce myself as an ecological anthropologist and computational social scientist studying how humans cooperate, manage shared resources, and shape socio-ecological systems. My dissertation research focused on swidden agriculture, a widespread tropical farming practice in which farmers pool labor to clear forest patches, cultivate crops, and allow fields to regenerate. To understand the social and ecological dimensions of swidden, I have drawn on both ethnographic insights and a suite of quantitative methods, ranging from network analysis to hierarchical Bayesian modeling, developed in collaboration with colleagues across anthropology, ecology, remote sensing, and mathematics. In this talk, I will highlight what this research reveals about the socio-ecology of swidden, discuss how interdisciplinary modeling approaches can illuminate broader socio-ecological processes, and outline my next steps as a postdoctoral scholar exploring quantitative techniques and their applications to ecological anthropology.
Contact
Andy Ni