Dr. Jeremy M. Campbell, ISE’s Associate Director for Strategic Engagement, is a cultural anthropologist who studies land conflicts and environmental change in the Brazilian Amazon. His research explores how Indigenous practices of ownership and belonging are mobilized to counter socio-ecological devastation in the region. Campbell is the author of the award-winning book Conjuring Property: Speculation and Environmental Futures in Amazonia (Univ. of Washington Press, 2015), and since 2014 has collaborated on land-demarcation efforts with the Munduruku people and other traditional communities in Brazil. His academic work has been published in PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, Boletín de Antropología, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, among other places. His research has been supported by the National Geographic Society, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the Fulbright-Hays Program, and has also been featured in international press outlets such as the Guardian, BBC-Brasil, and Mongabay. Since 2020, Campbell has served as the president of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America (SALSA), an international scholarly organization that advocates on behalf of peoples and environments in Amazonia and beyond.
Dr. Campbell joins the Institute for a Sustainable Earth after twelve years of teaching and administrative work at Roger Williams University, where he was Professor of Anthropology and co-founder of the programs in Sustainability Studies and Latin American and Latinx Studies. In these initiatives and as Director of the University Honors Program, Campbell catalyzed a range of partnerships in which faculty, students, and community organizations collaborated to address pressing environmental dilemmas. Over the years, he’s stewarded university partnerships with conservation groups, Indigenous communities, town and state governments, non-profit foundations, and environmental justice organizations. Campbell earned his PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Santa Cruz (2009), and his BA in Anthropology and Ethnic Studies from Davidson College (2002).