The majority of my research is conducted in collaboration with Martu hunter-gatherers in the Western Desert of Australia, where I spend much of my time. This NSF sponsored project began as the Martu were compiling their Native Title Claim (finally won in 2002) and focuses on contemporary foraging and land use practices in the remote Martu communities of Parnngurr, Punmu, and Kunawarritji. My collaborators on this project are Assoc. Prof. Rebecca Bliege Bird and Brian Codding at Stanford; Prof. David Zeannah at Sacramento State U., Prof. Eric Smith at U. Washington; Asst. Prof. Brooke Scelza at UCLA; and PhD student Chris Parker at U. Utah. 

I am also currently involved in two other projects. The first, the Comparative Wests Project, is an interdisciplinary, inter-institutional project concerned with understanding the construction and transformation of environments that emerge from interaction between Native peoples and invading settler colonialism. The second is study of the ecological effects and determinants of reef resource use on Tabuaeran atoll, Kiribati, Micronesia. The research is supported through the Environmental Ventures Projects in the Woods Institute for the Environment, and directed by myself, Fio Micheli, Rob Dunbar, Bill Durham, Doug McCauley, Elly Power at Stanford University. 

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