Associate Professor of Anthropology
Areas of Expertise: Alternative food movements, environmental anthropology, economic anthropology, Latin America, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Brooklyn, N.Y.
Ryan Adams is an anthropologist with research sites in Puerto Rico, Brooklyn, N.Y., and the Brazilian Amazon. Adams’ primary areas of research interest are centered on people and their relationship to food, farming and the environment. His current work examines alternative food movements, such as organic and local food advocacy, in Puerto Rico. He collaborates on various student-led research projects examining food, farming, and social justice in Pennsylvania.
Past projects include an analysis of local and organic food activism in Brooklyn, NY, the reaction of large landowners in the Amazon to environmental activism, folk models of predicting climate fluctuation, a study of organic farming in Bloomington, Ind., and analysis of geolocated interview data with a time-series of remotely sensed imagery.
Selected Publications
Adams, Ryan (2026) Food Anthropology: Continuities in a Critical, Holistic Field Shaped by Our Founding Mothers. Special Issue: 50th Anniversary of the Society for the Anthropology of Food and Nutrition (Editors Jennifer Thompson and Ariana Gunderson). Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment.
Brondizio, Eduardo S., Ryan Adams, Stefano Fiorini (2026) An unfinished synthesis: Environmental Anthropology and the Challenge of Interdisciplinary Relevance. Special issue: Histories of Environmental Anthropologies (Editors John Tresch and Cameron Brinitzer). Fieldsights.
Adams, Ryan (2026) “The Puerto Rican Local Food Movement: Transformation after Disaster” Chapter 23, Routledge International Handbook of Environmental Anthropology, Second Edition, Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet, Jessie Fredlund and Helen Kopnina (eds). New York, NY: Routledge International Press. Pp. 299-310.
Brondizio, Eduardo, Ryan Adams, and Stefano Fiorini (2026) “History and Scope of Environmental Anthropology” Chapter 2, Routledge International Handbook of Environmental Anthropology, Second Edition, Eleanor Shoreman-Ouimet, Jessie Fredlund and Helen Kopnina (eds). New York, NY: Routledge International Press. Pp. 10-31.
Adams, Ryan T. (2015). Becoming “Environmentally Responsible” Soybean Farmers: Neoliberal Environmentality in Santarém. CAFE: Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment. 37(2): 84-95.
Moran, Emilio, Ryan Adams, Bryn Bakoyéma, Stefano Fiorini, and Bruce Boucek. (2006). Human Strategies for Coping with El Niño Related Drought in Amazônia. Climatic Change 77(3-4): 343–361.