Human-environment interactions, globalization, development, and health are complexly interwoven with profound implications for humans and non-humans. The Department of Anthropology faculty seek to understand and facilitate students’ learning of these interactions.
Hausermann moved to Colorado in August 2018 to join anthropology and geography faculty in Colorado State University’s Department of Anthropology. In addition to offering programs in anthropology, the department has a robust undergraduate geography program and Hausermann has been a perfect addition.
“My family decided to move to Fort Collins from New Jersey for various reasons,” says Hausermann. “CSU is a great university. We also wanted to be closer to family and love the outdoors.” In addition to environmental sustainability research happening across campus, Hausermann appreciates the department’s focus in human-environmental research, both contemporary and in the past.
Like with teaching, Hausermann connects and learns from the people she meets in the field. She is interested in the ways people are able to maintain and transform livelihoods, disease treatment, and cultural practices in the context of injustice.
Heidi Hausermann conducting fieldwork in Ghana.
As an undergraduate at Willamette University in Oregon, Hausermann majored in environmental science and completed an eye-opening study abroad program in Tanzania. “There was an independent study portion of the program — we had to go off by ourselves and conduct a project. I interviewed rural Tanzanians about a new national park,” says Hausermann. “Udzungwa National Park had been recently created, and people were excluded from collecting firewood, thatching grasses and medicinal herbs on traditional land.” This experience was her first taste of ethnographic fieldwork that would later be used extensively in her research.
After graduation, she traveled to South Korea to teach English for the Fulbright Scholar Program and found out she was passionate about teaching. Hausermann continued to teach after returning to the United States. She decided to apply to graduate school after realizing higher education reconciled her love for teaching and investigating questions related to human-environment and health complexities. Hausermann completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona with minors in anthropology and Latin American studies.
On top of completing geography graduate degrees with an anthropology focus, it seems like she was meant to join a department comprised of both geographers and anthropologists. “I wanted to be an archaeologist growing up after seeing Indiana Jones,” laughed Hausermann. Her experiences and interests in anthropology, geography, and environmental science have found the perfect home in the Department of Anthropology at CSU.