About |
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About
Stephen Perz received his PhD in sociology with a specialization in demography from the University of Texas at Austin in 1997. He is an affiliate of UF’s Center for Latin American Studies and UF’s School of Natural Resources and Environment. He has conducted research in the Amazon on migration into frontier regions, socio-economic drivers of land use and land cover change, socio-spatial processes of road building, the social-ecological impacts of infrastructure, and the political ecology of environmental governance. He has received more than $17 million in funding from NASA, NSF, USAID, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and other sources, for research as well as applied conservation and development work. He focuses primarily on the southwestern Amazon, specifically the tri-national frontier where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet. His work features collaboration across disciplinary, national and organizational boundaries. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications in scholarly journals and books. In 2016, he published his book on the challenges and strategic practices of spanning boundaries in research and environmental management, Crossing Boundaries for Collaboration: Conservation and Development Projects in the Amazon. In 2019, he edited an international volume on the topic, Collaboration Across Boundaries for Social-Ecological Systems Science: Experiences Around the World. In addition to serving as a member of nearly 40 graduate committees, he has chaired over 30 PhD dissertation and MA thesis students in the Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the School of Natural Resources and Environment. In 2014, he was named a UF Foundation Preeminence Term Professor. In 2015, he was selected the UF International Educator of the Year for Senior Faculty. From 2016 to 2019, he was named a UF Term Professor. He won a CLAS Teacher of the Year Award in 2018-2019.
CV (PDF)
Teaching
Undergraduate Courses
- SYA 4300: Methods of Social Research
Graduate Courses
- SYA 7933/CCJ5934: Graduate Professional Seminar
Research
Dr. Stephen Perz conducts research on the social and ecological impacts of infrastructure on developing regions. This involves collaboration with other faculty and graduate students in various departments, centers, and schools at UF. He focuses on the Amazon, specifically the “MAP” region in the southwestern corner of the basin where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet. There, he collaborates with scholars across many disciplines, countries and types of institutions. They have received funding from NSF for interdisciplinary, international research projects to collect socio-economic, botanical and remote sensing data in order to develop and evaluate dynamic simulation models. He also works with numerous individuals and institutions in the MAP frontier on applied conservation and development projects. With funding from USAID, they have trained thousands of stakeholders in skills to improve natural resource management, have facilitated numerous policy dialogue events to address institutional questions and resource conflicts, and have supported planning processes for more sustainable territorial and watershed management. They have also built capacity in regional universities to apply scientific teaching techniques, to conduct applied research, and to publish in international scientific journals.
Areas of Interest
- Environmental Sociology
- Sociology of Development
- Sociology of Latin America
- Global and Transnational Sociology
- Rural Sociology
- Demography
Contact
Stephen Perz, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology and Chair
Office: Turlington Hall, Room 3115
Email: sperz@ufl.edu
Phone: (352) 294-7186
PO Box 117330
Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611