"Professor Aswani (Ph.D. 1997, U of Hawaii) comes to Rhodes University from the Department of Anthropology and the Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Marine Sciences at the University of California in Santa Barbara, USA. Aswani has conducted research in the Western Solomons Islands since 1992 particularly in the Roviana and Vonavona region, and more recently in the Vella Lavella, Rendova, and Marovo areas. His projects have focused on a diversity of subjects including property rights and common property resources, marine indigenous environmental knowledge, cultural ecology and human behavioural ecology of fishing, demography, ethnohistory, political ecology, economic anthropology, and applied anthropology. He also has developed a network of locally managed Marine Protected Areas (30 MPAs) and small-scale rural development projects in the Roviana, Vonavona, and Marovo Lagoons with funds provided by the MacArthur and Packard Foundations, CI, NSF, and Pew, among others. He heads a program named the Western Solomons Conservation Program (WSCP), which is still growing and expanding across the region. As a result of this effort, a Pew Fellowship in Marine Conservation was awarded to Aswani in 2005, the first time that the world’s premier award in marine conservation has been given to an anthropologist. He is also involved in archaeological/historical ecology projects in the Solomon Islands and more recently in a project sponsored by the National Geographic Society in the Marquesas, French Polynesia. Also, he developed a field school program on ecological anthropology and marine science in the Western Solomons. His publications include articles in the journals Ambio, American Anthropologist, Aquatic Conservation, Asian Perspectives, Biological Conservation, Conservation Biology, Current Anthropology, Coastal Management, Coral Reefs, Environmental Conservation, Human Ecology, Human Organization, Global Environmental Change, Ocean and Coastal Management, and Science among others. In recent years Aswani and his research team have studied the effects of the 2007 Western Solomons Tsunami on coastal communities as well as ongoing ecological and social changes caused by global climate change. Professor Aswani is developing similar projects in South Africa as well as in other coastal communities in East and West Africa. Professor Aswani was recently rated as a B (2) scientist by the South Africa National Research Foundation (NRF) (2015-2020)"

 Social Anthropology