Scientific Advisors

The International Advisory Board is comprised of leading researchers from around the world who specialize in fields related to biocultural diversity. With academic backgrounds in agriculture, anthropology, biodiversity conservation, ecology, linguistics and other disciplines, they provide advice on the overall scientific direction of The Global Diversity Foundation. They ensure that the Foundation’s multidisciplinary approach focuses on key hypotheses, innovative methodologies and cutting-edge theory and practice. Apart from collaborating in proposal writing and research design, they participate in specific courses, field projects and seminars. The members of the International Advisory Board have extensive experience in the various regions where GDF is currently active or plans to develop field programmes in the future.

Rajindra Puri PhD (United States/United Kingdom)

Dr. Rajindra K. Puri is an environmental anthropologist and ethnobiologist at the University of Kent. He teaches courses in Environmental Anthropology, Development Anthropology, Ethnobotany and Research Methods. Dr. Puri received his BA in Anthropology and Biology from Middlebury College in Vermont, and his doctorate in anthropology from the University of Hawai'i while a degree fellow at the East-West Center Programme on Environment in Honolulu. Over the past 15 years he has been studying the historical ecology of a rainforest valley in Indonesian Borneo, documenting the ethnobiological knowledge of Penan Benalui hunter-gatherers and Kenyah swidden agriculturalists, elucidating the causes and consequences of trade in wildlife and plants, and developing theory and methods for an applied conservation social science. His most recent book is Deadly Dances in the Bornean Rainforest: Hunting Knowledge of the Penan Benalui (KITLV Press). He has also held positions as a research fellow, consultant, and trainer for the East-West Center, WWF Indonesia, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR, a CGIAR centre), the WWF/UNESCO/KEW People and Plants Initiative and Fauna and Flora International.  He continues to work with colleagues at CIFOR on the Multipurpose Landscape Assessment project, developing methods to combine social and biological approaches to community-based conservation and development. He has collaborated on Global Diversity Foundation research and training projects in Morocco (Wildlife trade in Southern Morocco), and Sabah, Malaysia (Ethnobiology of proposed traditional use zones in Crocker Range Park).