Richard Schroeder is a Human Geographer by training, whose work is situated at the intersection of political ecology, development studies and African Studies. His work engages questions of power and control over natural resources; the formation of environmental subjectivities along lines of gender, race and nationality; international, state and non-governmental policies and practices that shape rural production systems (horticulture/agriculture, forestry, wildlife tourism, trophy hunting, and gemstone mining); and the contested ideologies, discourses, and practices that inflect related political struggles. He has also conducted research on gender and development, and patterns of foreign direct investment by South African capital following the end of Apartheid.

He is the author of two books and an edited collection, including Africa After Apartheid: South Africa, Race and Nation in Tanzania, which won the American Association of Geographers’ (AAG) Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work in Geography in 2012. He subsequently received the 2016 Robert Netting award for research and professional activities that bridge Geography and Anthropology by the AAG’s Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group. Schroeder is a past member of the Board of Directors of the African Studies Association, and a recipient of the 2014 Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools’ Graduate Teaching Award.

Richard Schroeder is emeritus Professor of Geography at Rutgers University. He previously served as Director (founding) of the Center for African Studies; Undergraduate Director, Graduate Director, and Chair of the Department of Geography; and Dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Rutgers. He holds a BA from Macalester College; an MS from the University of Wisconsin; and a PhD from the University of California-Berkeley.