Paul Berne Burow is incoming Assistant Professor in the Energy and Resources Group, joining the faculty in July 2027.
An environmental anthropologist by training, his research develops moral ecology as a framework for understanding how cultural values shape environmental governance, climate adaptation, and land stewardship. He works at the intersection of environmental anthropology, human-environment geography, and the Indigenous environmental sciences, using mixed methods that span ethnography, ethnoecology, interviews, focus groups, household surveys, community science, participatory mapping, and spatial analysis. His research examines how Indigenous peoples and rural communities experience, adapt to, and shape environmental change on the landscapes they call home.
His current research investigates collaborative forest stewardship with Tribal Nations and federal land management agencies in California's Eastern Sierra Nevada and the Great Basin, examining how Indigenous knowledge, cultural values, and governance institutions shape the effectiveness of shared stewardship and its outcomes for ecosystem health and community wellbeing. He is developing an applied framework for integrating cultural ecosystem services into forest management planning, and he leads a longitudinal study of climate resilience and rural wellbeing in the Eastern Sierra. His book manuscript, Good Country: Land Stewardship and Belonging in the American West, examines the cultural politics of environmental change through the experiences of Paiute, Washoe, and Shoshone communities, federal land managers, conservationists, and livestock ranchers navigating ecological transformation in the rural West. He is also developing a new line of research on agricultural land use transitions and environmental justice in California's San Joaquin Valley.
Dr. Burow is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship in the Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. from Yale University in the combined doctoral program in Anthropology and Forestry and Environmental Science, along with an M.Phil. in Anthropology and an M.E.Sc. in Forestry and Environmental Science from Yale, and a B.A. from the University of California, Davis.
Dr. Burow will be recruiting graduate students beginning with the current admissions cycle, for entry in fall 2027 or later. More information about the group's research and how to get in touch is at http://paulburow.org/research-group.
