MDP Faculty
The MDP faculty connects different University of Arizona departments, schools and colleges, and professional and institutional partners. Our 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.
Raymond Smith is the MDP Assistant Director. He joined the MDP Program after spending more than 20 years in New York City, where he was on the adjunct political science faculties at Columbia and NYU. He continues to be an Adjunct Associate Professor with the NYU Center for Global Affairs, teaching human rights and politics. Dr. Smith has also worked extensively on the international HIV/AIDS epidemic, including as: a researcher and administrator at the Division of Gender, Sexuality, and Health at the Columbia University Medical Center; as a founding member of the Program for the Study of LGBT Health; and as associate director of a fellowship program for emerging community leaders in HIV prevention and gender equity in South Africa. In 2017, he completed an LL.M. (Master of Laws) in international human rights law at the University of Essex in the UK, where his work included a project with the World Health Organization (WHO). His prior degrees include a Ph.D. in political science and an interdisciplinary M.A. in international relations, and he is also currently writing a book for Routledge (2019) entitled Extending International Human Rights Protections to Vulnerable Populations. At Arizona, Dr. Smith also teaches in the School of Government and Public Policy and in the Program in Human Rights Practice.
Stephanie Buechler is a core faculty member of MDP. Her research focuses on natural resource use under changing environmental conditions in rural, peri-urban and urban settings. She has conducted research in Guanajuato, Sonora, Chihuahua and Zacatecas, Mexico; Tucson, Arizona; Hyderabad and Uttarakhand, India; Tegucigalpa, Honduras; and La Paz, Bolivia. She is currently or has recently conducted research on people's perceptions of the international wastewater treatment plant in Rio Rico, Arizona; on women's experiences with renewable energy in their homes and with large-scale projects in urban and rural Arizona and, with Mexican colleagues, in Zacatecas, Mexico; social, environmental and economic sustainability of community gardens for low-income populations in Tucson, Arizona; and women's strategies in the context of climate and water resource challenges in kitchen gardens in San Ignacio, Sonora, Mexico.
Faculty in the Field of Development
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
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
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