• Hoang Mai Thach
  • Hoang Mai Thach
  • Research Interests: science and technology studies in nature conservation, rewilding nature, conservation values and ethics, environmental stewardship, nature conservation in the Anthropocene, ethnoprimatology and multispecies ethnography, science and communication
  • Advisor: Pam McElwee
  • Degree: Ph.D.

 

My PhD research explores how the Anthropocene condition in tropical countries like Vietnam ties multiple spaces and concepts of nature conservation together, e.g. biodiversity conservation, conservation biology, new conservation, rewilding nature, and restoration ecology. I focus on species rewilding in Vietnam including both in-situ and ex-situ spaces for conservation. My research investigates values of aesthetics and wilderness, economic values as connected to the production of nature, the roles of humans and non-humans in agency making, and multiple ontology-making of conservation goals and practices as produced by Anthropocene conditions. For my master's research I studied the ecology and conservation of the Tonkin Snub-nosed Monkey in Vietnam, and I have also published about the development of primatology and primate conservation in Vietnam and on slow loris conservation and wildlife trade in Vietnam through an ethnoprimatology and multispecies ethnography lens.

I am a Teaching Assistant for the Department of Human Ecology at Rutgers University and I have also taught Environmental Anthropology, Biological Anthropology, Marine Biology, and Vertebrate Zoology at Vietnam National University in Hanoi.


Previous Degrees:

  • M.A., University of Colorado at Boulder


Awards:

  • Russell E. Train Education for Nature Fellow, 2016–2019