Smith College Department of Anthropology

Frédérique Apffel-Marglin received her B.A. and Ph.D. from Brandeis University , the latter awarded in 1980. She has lived in India since the mid 1960's. She was first a student of Indian Classical Dance (Orissi style) and later did her first field research among the temple dancers of Jagannath Temple in Orissa in the mid 1970's. Her later field research was among agricultural communities in coastal Orissa. Since 1994 she had engaged in collaborative work with non-governmental organizations in Peru and Bolivia . She taught in graduate courses that those organizations offered from 1994 until 2005. She was the coordinator of Centers for Mutual Learning in Peru and Bolivia during that period. This project was funded by a MacArthur grant until 1999. With the Peruvian NGO PRATEC, she had created a research and community center in the Peruvian High Amazon where she directed a program in Bio-cultural Diversity for US undergraduates from 2001 until 2004.

She was a research advisor at the World Institute for Development Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki , an affiliate of the United Nations University, from 1985 until 1991. As part of that endeavor, she and Stephen A. Marglin formed an interdisciplinary and international collaborative team that has produced three books on critical approaches to development and globalization.

She currently directs a January Term course in the Peruvian High Amazon, titled “Fair Trade and Bio-Cultural Regeneration in the High Amazon”. This course is administered by the non profit organization Living Routes. For more information, click here: Peru: Fair Trade & Bio-cultural Regeneration in the High Amazon

She is the author of three books, the editor or co-editor of an additional six books and the author of some forty five articles and book chapters. Her interests cover ritual, gender, political ecology, critiques of development, science studies and Fair Trade. Her areas of specialization are South Asia and the Andes . She is currently finishing a book based on her collaboration with several Peruvian organizations as well as her current work with a Fair Trade Organic Coffee Cooperative in the Peruvian High Amazon.