Trained as an ecological anthropologist and ethnobiologist, since 1989 Dr Raj Puri has been studying the human ecology of a rainforest valley in Indonesian Borneo: documenting traditional ecological knowledge in Penan Benalui and Kenyah Badang communities, particularly hunting knowledge; elucidating the causes and consequences of trade in wild animals and plants; and developing theory and methods for an applied conservation anthropology.
More recently, he and his students have been studying local adaptation to climatic variability (El Nino) and climate change in Borneo and elsewhere. He was a co-investigator on the ESPA-funded project Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change, which took him to the hilly regions of southern Karnataka, India, for field research among Soliga and Lingayat communities in 2011 and 2015-16. This work, in collaboration with ATREE, drew him into research on invasive species and other ways in which changes in biodiversity due to climate change threaten biocultural diversity and local livelihoods.
He is now thinking about how anthropologists can contribute to climate-change science and specifically developing mixed methods for studying local responses to environmental change more widely. To this end, his research has also addressed responses to complex transformations in rural landscapes in Europe (Iberian cork oak landscapes and Kent agriculture).
Raj has served as an ethnobiology consultant to WWF Indonesia’s Kayan Mentarang Project, CIFOR’s Multipurpose Landscape Assessment, Flora and Fauna International’s assessment of CBNRM in Northern Vietnam, Darwin Initiative projects in Vietnam, GIZ’s Conservation of freshwater aquatic resources in Northeast India, and collaborated on Global Diversity Foundation research and training projects in Morocco, Namibia and Sabah, Malaysia
He is a Trustee for the Borneo Research Council and The Healing Earth Alliance, a Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and an Editor of the Borneo Research Bulletin and Ethnobiological Letters.
Recent key publications
By theme, include:
Puri, R.K. (n.d.). The one that got away: learning from unsuccessful hunts about knowledge, practice, and belief. In Anthropology of Hunting, edited by L Broz, et al. Helsinki University Press.
Puri, R.K. 2020. Performance Knowledge: uncovering the dynamics of biocultural diversity of Borneo’s tropical forests through a Penan hunting technique. In Handbook of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge: Global Themes and Practice, eds. T. Thornton & S. Bhagwat. Routledge. ISBN-13: 978-1138280915
Puri, R.K. 2023. Indigenous and local peoples’ conceptualisations of invasive and alien species.
Current projects
Undergraduate
Dr Puri is programme convenor for the MSc in Ethnobotany
Dr Puri co-ordinated the Erasmus Intensive Programme, 'Biocultural Diversity of local people and migrants' in Europe: Concepts and Interdisciplinary Method for a consortium of ten universities in Europe (2009-2011). 25 teachers and 110 postgraduate students convened in Canterbury and Barcelona for two-week summer schools.
Current PhD students
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