Teaching Fellows

Marshall Kramer received his PhD in Anthropology from the University of Chicago in August 2022. At the intersection of environmental, economic, and medical anthropology, his research explores the working worlds of resource extraction and management in the borderlands of inter-Asia. Drawing on 4 years of fieldwork in the Myanmar Himalaya, including extensive oral history recording, mapping, and ethnobotany, his dissertation documents indigenous efforts to wrestle control over the region’s booming herbal medicine trade with China amidst processes of displacement, deforestation, and decades of war. In uncovers the central role that motorcycles and diverse herbal remedies in sustaining this indigenous trade and other resource flows like gold and timber.  

Alongside this project Kramer has engaged in over a decade of advocacy work with indigenous and forest-using communities in Asia and America, which he looks forward to continuing in future projects focusing on international indigenous conservation movements and efforts to regain control over (and foster the expansion of) biodiversity resources.