Rebecca Witter

Rebecca Witter is an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Development at Appalachian State University. Trained as environmental anthropologist and political ecologist, she positions her scholarship at the intersections between culture, power, environment, and development. Before joining the faculty at Appalachian, Witter held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute of Resources Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia and received her PhD in Environmental Anthropology at the University of Georgia. Witter’s long-term research examines how people experience and respond to conservation-related dispossession in southern Africa. This work focuses on the history of conservation implementation, changing relations to land and labor, and the politics and meanings of illegal wildlife hunting in the cross-border region comprised by the Limpopo National Park in Mozambique and the Kruger National Park in South Africa. She has also critically assessed the politics of global environmental decision-making, in particular the integration of Indigenous Rights in protected area policy and practice. More recent research, undertaken with the Eastern NC Environmental Justice Collaborative (EJ Co-Lab) and supported by a Chancellor’s Innovation Scholars Grant and an RIEEE Concert Award, assesses water, social resilience, and environmental care in the context of bioenergy development, specifically biomass and biogas.

December 2021