Nancy Lee Peluso

Nancy Lee Peluso "is Professor of Environmental Social Science and Resource Policy in the College of Natural Resources and the Program Director of the Berkeley Workshop in Environmental Politics, housed in the Institute of International Studies. She serves as a faculty member in the Society and Environment Division of the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, where she teaches courses in Political Ecology. Her research since the 1980s has focused on Forest Politics and Agrarian Change in Southeast Asia, primarily in Indonesia. She has done field research in various parts of Indonesia—West and Central Java, East and West Kalimantan and in Sarawak, Malaysia. Her work addresses questions of property rights and access to resources, forest policy and politics, histories of land use change, and agrarian and environmental violence. She is the author or editor of three books: Rich Forests, Poor People: Resource Control and Resistance in Java (UC Press, 1992 – still available); Borneo in Transition: People, Forests, Conservation and Development (Oxford Press, 1996 and 2003, ed. with Christine Padoch); and Violent Environments (Cornell Press, 2001, ed. with Michael Watts.), and nearly fifty journal articles and book chapters. Professor Peluso speaks or reads four languages besides English. In 2003, she was awarded a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship and is finishing a book manuscript tentatively titled, “Ways of Seeing Borneo: Landscape, Territory, and Violence”."

Recent publications

• Joseph Nevins, and Nancy Lee Peluso (eds) Taking Southeast Asia to Market: Commodities, People and Nature in a Neoliberal Age (Cornell University Press, 2008).

Academic Prizes and Grants

• 1996 Simpson Chair, International and Area Studies Dean's Office, University of California, Berkeley ($10,000 in research funds for two years)
• 1995 Outstanding Scholarly Contribution to Rural Sociology for Rich Forests, Poor People .
• 1994 Award of Merit from the Natural Resources Research Group, Rural Sociological Society.
• Rich Forests, Poor People selected by Choice as one of the top 10% books reviewed in 1993.
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Support for Common Property Resources Digest, ($107,000 for 3 years). 1995-1997
• National Science Foundation, Global Perspectives on Law and Society Program (with Co-PI Dr. Peter Vandergeest, University of Victoria, Canada): "Property, Resources, and the Globalization of Legal Systems." ($350,000 for 3 years). 1993-1996
• Rockefeller Brothers Fund (with Co-PI Peter Vandergeest), "Property and Political Ecology in Southeast Asia." $55,000. 1994.
• Joint-funding by The Ford Foundation/Social Science Research Council, UNESCO-MAB, The Biodiversity Support Program, and WCI (co-PI with Dr. Christine Padoch, New York Botanical Garden) for conference and book on conservation and development in Borneo 1991. ($57,000).
• Ciriacy-Wantrup Postdoctoral Fellowship, School of Natural Resources, University of California, Berkeley. "Extraction and Extractive Reserves in Kalimantan: The Political Ecology of a Development Strategy." 1990-91, 1991-92. ($59,000 over two years).
• Lauriston Sharp Award for scholarship and community, Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1988.
• Cornell Southeast Asia Program Dissertation write-up grant 1986.
• Ford Foundation Fellowship for Research and Field Study Coordination 1984-1986 ($44,000 for two years).
• National Resource Fellowships [graduate tuition and stipend, 3 academic years], 1981-1984.
• U.S. Forest Service/Man & Biosphere Grant (participating researcher), 1979-80.
• Ford Foundation Field Research Grant 1976-77.