Geographer named honorary professor at Peruvian university
David Salisbury is a first-year assistant professor in the University of Richmond’s geography, environmental studies and international studies programs. In Peru, however, he’s already been named an honorary professor by the Universidad Nacional de Ucayali for his contributions to improving scientific knowledge of Amazonia and the development of young professionals in the Ucayali region.
Salisbury, who obtained his doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin’s Department of Geography and the Environment, first visited the Ucayali region of the Peruvian Amazon as a graduate student in the summer of 2002. He was searching for a potential research site for his doctoral dissertation fieldwork and met with the vice president of the Universidad Nacional de Ucayali.
In 2004, Salisbury returned to Peru with a Fulbright-Hays grant to conduct 10 months of dissertation fieldwork in Amazonia and spent two months at the university, training five undergraduate students to be his field assistants. The work wasn’t entirely unfamiliar. He’d done his Master’s work in Brazil on the transition of rubber tappers to cattle ranching and had developed an interest in the international boundary zones and settlement frontiers near the border between Peru and Brazil.
“I want to improve geographic information through participatory research with local people, both the indigenous residents and colonists, in an attempt to reconcile conservation and development in these culturally and ecologically rich borderlands. My dissertation Overcoming Marginality on the Margins: Mapping, Logging, and Coca in the Amazon Borderlands also focused on illegal operators such as illegal loggers and coca cultivators who take advantage of the lack of geographic knowledge and state presence to control the territory and economies of the borderlands,” Salisbury said.
Before Salisbury and his team could head out into the field, he needed to train them in geospatial technology (GPS, Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing) and ethnographic field methods. The Universidad Nacional de Ucayali recognized the value of the project, funded four of the five students and also invested money in the research project.
Once the students had been trained, the team spent four months in the field gathering data. The data was what Salisbury needed to complete his dissertation, however, he was far from ready to pack it up and go home.
As part of the project, he founded an interdisciplinary research center at the university, el Centro de Investigación de Fronteras Amazónicas (Amazon Frontiers Research Center), along with five local professors, including a soil specialist, a fauna specialist, an anthropologist, an agronomist and an animal husbandry expert. Salisbury made presentations at the university and at the Ucayali Chamber of Commerce. He also traveled to Lima and Brazil to give talks.
Salisbury wrapped up his dissertation back at the University of Texas and entered the job market. He was pleased when an opportunity to come and teach at the University of Richmond presented itself, but he’d yet to set foot in a Richmond classroom before he was back in Ucayali, Peru and Acre, Brazil in August 2007 courtesy of the University of Richmond’s School of Arts & Sciences, distributing copies of his dissertation.
“My work has relevant applications to my counterparts in the local communities, universities, government, and non-governmental organizations such as the Nature Conservancy, Prontaturaleza, S.O.S. Amazonia, The Institute of the Common Good and Comissão Pro-Indio,” Salisbury said.
While Salisbury was visiting, he was tapped by the president of the Universidad Nacional de Ucayali and asked if he’d be willing to return in December to receive an honorary professorship. Each year, the university honors individuals for their academic, democratic and scientific trajectory, which benefits both their institutions and humanity. Salisbury would be honored alongside two Peruvian university presidents, the executive director of the National Bank of Peru and Alonso Cueto, a recognized Peruvian novelist of 15 books, many of which have been translated.
When Salisbury returned to Richmond with the news, the School of Arts & Sciences along with the Office of International Education, made arrangements to send him back to Peru once more, this time to accept the honor.
“I was extremely honored to receive the award and look forward to sustained collaboration with the institution, faculty and students of the Universidad Nacional de Ucayali as we seek to better understand the complexities of the Amazon borderlands and to develop young Amazonian professionals with the tools to balance conservation and development in the critically important region of Amazonia.”