MDP Faculty

The University of Arizona includes many departments, schools and colleges, and professional and institutional partners who work in the areas relating to development practice. UArizona faculty and staff have extensive international experience and are recognized as both scholars and practitioners.  

Core Faculty and Management 

Katherine Snyder is the MDP Director. With a Ph.D. in Anthropology, Professor Snyder has over a decade of experience living and working in several African countries. Her work has focused on political and social change, agricultural development and community-based natural resource management. She has worked in fisheries, water management, pastoralism and tropical agriculture focusing on institutional analysis, governance, and farmer decision-making. An anthropologist by training, she has worked on multidisciplinary teams with ecologists, economists, soil scientists, agronomists, foresters, hydrologists and rangeland managers to design solutions to challenges faced by rural smallholders in Africa.  

Faculty in the Field of Development  Practice

These faculty members, drawn from programs throughout the University of Arizona, conduct teaching and research relating to development practice. Courses taught by these faculty are regularly available to MDP students. 

Tim Finan, Anthropology (Founder of the Arizona MDP Program)

Diane Austin, Anthropology 

Mamadou Baro, Anthropology

Laura Bakkensen, Government and Public Policy 

Elizabeth Baldwin, Government and Public Policy 

Alex Braithwaite, Government and Public Policy 

James Buizer, Natural Resources and the Environment 

Joel Cuello, Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering 

John Ehiri, Public Health

Kacey Ernst, Public Health 

Larry Fisher, Natural Resources and the Environment 

Kevin Fitzsimmons, Soil, Water and Environmental Sciences  

Anna Josephson, Agricultural and Resource Economics 

Laura Lopez-Hoffman, Natural Resources and the Environment

Diana Liverman, Geography

William Mannan, Natural Resources and the Environment

Stuart Marsh, Natural Resources and the Environment

Jeffrey Michler, Agricultural and Resource Economics 

William Mishler, Government and Public Policy 

Lise Nelson, Geography 

David Quanrud, Natural Resources and the Environment 

Tauhidur Rahman, Agricultural and Resource Economics

Raymond Smith, Human Rights Practice (and former MDP Assistant Director) 

Paul Schuler, Government and Public Policy 

Donald C. Slack, Middle Eastern Studies

Jose Soto, Natural Resources and the Environment 

Douglas Taren, Public Health 

Marcela Vásquez-León, Anthropology

Peter Waller, Biosystems Engineering 

Paul Wilson, Agriculture and Resource Economics

Rod Wing, Plant Sciences