Dr Rajindra Puri

About

Dr. Rajindra K. Puri is the Director of the Centre for Biocultural Diversity, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Kent in Canterbury, UK.

He is also an Honorary Research Associate at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew,    and a Lecturer in Ethnobotany on the MSc Global Health: Food Security, Sustainability and Biodiversity, based at Royal Holloway University London and RBG Kew.

He serves as External Examiner for the MSc Biodiversity, Wildlife and Ecosystem Health, University of Edinburgh.

He is the 2025 Distinguished Ethnobotanist, elected by the Society of Ethnobotany.

Research interests

Raj was trained as an anthropologist and ethnobiologist at Middlebury College and the University of Hawai’i, and gained initial research and policy experience as a Degree Fellow in the Environment and Policy Institute of the East West Center in Hawai’i.

Over the past 35 years he has been conducting interdisciplinary research on local knowledge systems, the dynamics of human-environment relations, and the application of anthropology to conservation social science, in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Europe and recently, India. Some of this work is published in the books, Bulungan Ethnobiology Handbook (CIFOR 2001), Deadly Dances in the Bornean Rainforest (KITLV Press, 2005) and Conducting Research in Conservation: A Social Science Perspective (Routledge 2010). Most of his research has been conducted with local researchers. He has extensive experience in multidisciplinary teams, co-creating research design, and teaching anthropology to natural scientists. For instance, he worked closely with forest ecologists and economists to design a ground breaking CIFOR project, Multidisciplinary Landscape Assessment. 

He has worked in northern Vietnam (2001) for Flora and Fauna International, and collaborated on Global Diversity Foundation research and training projects in Morocco (Wildlife trade in Southern Morocco), Namibia (Kalahari Garden Project), and Sabah, Malaysia (Darwin Initiatives: Ethnobiology of proposed traditional use zones in Crocker Range Park, Participatory approaches to nominating Crocker Range Biosphere Reserve).

He was a co-investigator on the ESRC funded Interactive methods for the study of the transmission and acquisition of environmental knowledge (2002-5), where he developed digital and visual methods for studying local knowledge transmission. He has organized and taught on numerous international training programmes, and was coordinator of the EU Erasmus Intensive Programme, The Biocultural Diversity of local peoples and migrants in Europe: Concepts and Interdisciplinary methods (2009-11).

His recent work has focused on local adaptation to climatic variability and environmental change. He was a co-investigator on the ESPA project Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change, where he worked with ATREE colleagues on local adaptation to invasive Lantana camera in the MM Hills, southern Karnataka. This work has drawn him into research on ways climate-induced biodiversity change threatens biocultural diversity and local livelihoods. That research is published in The uniqueness of the everyday: Herders and invasive species in India, in the book Climate Cultures (Yale 2015).  

He is now thinking about how anthropologists can contribute to climate change science (Barnes et. al. 2013 Nature Climate Change), and specifically developing mixed methods for studying local responses to environmental change. Toward this end, he and his students at Kent are studying responses to complex transformations in rural landscapes in Europe (iberian cork oak landscapes and Kent agriculture). He also the author of and co-editor with M. Pardo de Santayana and A. Pieroni of Ethnobotany in the New Europe (Berghahn, 2010).

He contributed to the 2023 IPBES Thematic Assessment on Invasive Alien Species, with an analysis of "Indigenous and local peoples’ conceptualisations of invasive and alien species".

Raj has published over 50 research books, book chapters and articles in environmental anthropology, hunting, indigenous knowledge, conservation social science, research methods, ethnobotany, ethnomedicine, invasive species, biodiversity and climate change adaptation:

Some recent publications:

Linking Faith and Conservation in Sacred and Community Forests of Far Western Nepal. Religions, 16(4), 480. 2025. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel16040480

Indigenous and local peoples’ conceptualisations of invasive and alien species. Thematic Assessment Report on Invasive Alien Species and their Control. IPBES. 2023.

Performance Knowledge: uncovering the dynamics of biocultural diversity of Borneo’s tropical forests through a Penan hunting technique. 2020. Handbook of Indigenous Environmental Knowledge: Global Themes and Practice, ISBN-13: 978-1138280915

Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change in the Anthropocene. Special Issue, Ambio 2019.

The uniqueness of the everyday: Herders and invasive species in India. In Climate Cultures: Anthropological Perspectives on Climate Change 2015.

Contribution of anthropology to the study of climate change. Nature Climate Change 2013.

Documenting Local Environmental Knowledge and Change; Participant Observation; Community Mapping. In Conducting Research in Conservation: A Social Science Perspective. Routledge 2011.

Local people's priorities for biodiversity: examples from the forests of Indonesian Borneo. Ambio 2006.

Deadly Dances in the Bornean Rainforest: Hunting Knowledge of the Penan Benalui. KITLV Press. 2005.

The Bulungan Ethnobiology Handbook. CIFOR 2001.

Publications in Ethnobotany:

Plant names encode Tašlḥit knowledge of Morocco’s High Atlas landscapes. Human Ecology 2023.

Indigenous and local peoples’ conceptualisations of invasive and alien species. IPBES 2023.

eDNA metabarcoding reveals dietary niche overlap among herbivores in an Indian wildlife sanctuary. Environmental DNA 2020.

Human Adaptation to Biodiversity Change in the Anthropocene. Ambio 2019.

Harnessing the Interdisciplinary: A brief history of Ethnobotany at Kent. TEA 2018.

Recommended standards for conducting and reporting ethnopharmacological field studies. J. Ethnopharmacology 2017.

The consumption of acorns (from Quercus spp.) in the Central West of Iberian Peninsula in the twentieth century. Economic Botany 2017.

Treating infants with frigg: linking disease aetiologies, medicinal plant use and care-seeking behaviour in southern Morocco. J. Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2017.

Conceptualising 'core' medicinal flora: A comparative and methodological study of phytomedical resources in related Indonesian populations. Conservation and Society 2015.

Ngäbe ethnobotany in Costa Rica: Food plants and change in the 21st century. J. Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2014.

Dormancy and revitalization: The fate of ethnobotanical knowledge of camel forage among Sahrawi nomads and refugees of Western Sahara. E.R.A. 2014.

Transmitting Penan basketry knowledge and practice. Berghahn Books 2013.

Ethics and research methodologies for the study of traditional forest-related knowledge.  World Forests 2012

Learning from traditional knowledge of non-timber forest products: Penan Benalui and the autecology of Aquilaria in Indonesian Borneo. Ecology and Society 2004.

Tools and methods for Data Collection in Ethnobotanical Studies of Homegardens. Field Methods 2004.

Teaching

Raj has 25 years of academic teaching, research and administration at University of Kent, plus visiting positions at UCL and ATREE (India), and overseas teaching and training courses in more than 10 countries, in Anthropology, Ethnobiology, Conservation Social Sciences and Research Methods.

Senior Lecturer, School of Anthropology & Conservation, University of Kent (2000-24)

Leadership positions as Programme Convenor for degrees in Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobotany, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Admissions, Senior Tutor, International Study Programmes.

Lecturer in Ethnobotany, MSc Global Health: Food, Food Security and Biodiversity, Royal Holloway University London and RBG Kew. 2024-
Lecturer in Ethnobotany, MA Programme, New School of the Anthropocene, London. 2025-

Supervision

Primary supervisor: 20 PhD, >100 MSc; Internal or external examiner for 26 PhDs (6 in ConBio).

Current Primary PhD Supervisor for:

Fiona Hafvenstein (SeNNS) 2023 – present. Medicinal plants as a boundary mechanism: bridging the divide between traditional and biomedical health systems in Nepal with Artemisia annua.

Hannah Reid (Cayman Govt) 2023 – present. Rising rooted: Reactivating traditional Caymanian ‘bush’ knowledge as a source of environmental and cultural resiliency.

Harriet Gendall (SeNNS) 2020 – present. The revitalisation of naked oats in Cornwall, UK.

Professional

Board of Directors, HEARTH, Healing Earth Alliance
Board of Trustees, Borneo Research Council

Co-Editor Environmental Anthropology and Ethnobiology Series, Berghahn Books
Co-Editor Borneo Research Bulletin
Editorial Board, Contributions in Ethnobiology

Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute (RAI)
Committee Member, RAI Urgent Anthropology Fellowship, London
Committee Member, RAI Environment Committee, London
Organising Committee, RAI Conference 2022, Anthropology and Conservation
Council Member of the Royal Anthropological Institute 2012-2015

Reviewer for funding applications to the Netherlands Academy of Sciences (on Biofuels); Austrian Science Foundation, Swiss Science Foundation, Netherlands Foundations for the Advancement of Tropical Research, Norwegian Research Council (Adaptation to Climate Change), AHRC, ESRC, Wenner Gren Foundation

Reviewer of publications to Berghahn, Berg, Routledge, British Museum Occasional Papers, Current Anthropology, American Anthropologist, JRAI, Human Ecology, Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine, Ethos, Journal of Political Ecology, Forest Ecology, Society and Natural Resources, Nature: Ecology and Evolution; Plants,People,Planet.