Amanda Stronza

Amanda Stronza, Ph.D. is a professor in the Texas A&M University Department of Ecology and Conservation Biology, and co-founder of the Applied Biodiversity Science Program. An anthropologist by training, her passion is in understanding how people relate to animals. In places where people are protecting wildlife, she asks: who are the stewards, what do they know, how do they live, what do they care about, what do they need? These questions have inspired 30 years of field research, conservation, advocacy, writing, teaching, and photography, mostly in the Amazon regions of Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and in the Okavango Delta of Botswana. In 2013, she co-founded Ecoexist, a non-profit organization devoted to supporting human-elephant coexistence. She has been PI on multiple grants from the National Science Foundation as well as private foundations, including the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and The Howard G. Buffet Foundation. She is currently leading new research on human-predator interactions in the Kalahari and human-macaque interactions in Nepal. She is also a professional photographer with Getty Images and has published in Rolling Stone, the Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian, among many other news outlets. Her fine art photographs and stories of memorials honoring road-killed animals have been featured in the popular media and art galleries.