The Sangha River Network

The Network - SRN Directors and Student Coordinators

 Rebecca Hardin, Director has worked since 1988 in and on the equatorial forests of Central Africa, first as a Peace Corps Volunteer and later as an anthropologist. Her research focuses on social relations of forest use in the Sangha River region, where Cameroon, Central African Republic, and Congo meet. Her Ph.D. dissertation in anthropology is entitled:  "Translating the Forest: Tourism, Trophy Hunting, and the Transformation of Forest Use in Central African Republic" (Yale University).  Her postdoctoral research projects, shaped in collaboration with SRN members Philippe Auzel, Joseph Baliguini, Alain Froment, and Pierre Vidal, among others, focus on health issues as they relate to changing economies and ecologies of forest use. She is currently a Lecturer in Anthropology at Yale University, a visiting professor in Political Science at the Sorbonne in Paris, and will be an Academy Fellow at Harvard University for the next two years.  For a copy of the abstract from Rebecca’s dissertation, click here.

Heather E. Eves, Co-Director is a wildlife biologist and has studied and worked in Africa since 1985.  She is currently Director of the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force based in the Washington DC metro area and is a Doctoral Candidate at Yale University's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.  Her dissertation research focused on the subsistence and commercial bushmeat trade in logging and non-logging communities of northern Congo (Brazzaville).  She holds a Master of Science in Wildlife Science with a minor in Experimental Statistics from New Mexico State University.  Her thesis work, supported by a Fulbright scholarship, focused on gamebird hunting and management including work with Maasai communities in Kenya.  In addition to her research, she has been involved with the development of wildlife education programmes for African children and adults as the Coordinator of the William Holden Wildlife Education Center in Nanyuki, Kenya and was a Peace Corps Volunteer (Science and English Secondary School Teacher) where she worked extensively with the Wildlife Clubs of Kenya. Heather is a member of The Wildlife Society of the US as well as the IUCN/SSC Antelope Specialist Group.

 Patrice Etoungou is particularly interested in notions of environmental and social justice in the context of forest management in his native Cameroon. His work, a strong critique of the Community Forest projects that attempt to foster decentralization of forest management in Cameroon, has exposed many of the obstacles and ironies that movement faces in the equatorial African context. A graduate of the Catholic University of Yaoundé, he has completed a DEA degree at Laboratoire ERMES at University of Orléans, under the direction of SRN members Serge Bahuchet, Alain Froment, and Rebecca Hardin, among others. He has published a book entitled “Au Coeur de la Forêt sans Arbre:  les Paysans Trahis” (The heart of the forest without trees: peasants betrayed). He has also authored a working paper under the auspices of the World Resources Institute in Washington D.C., with input from network member Jesse Ribot who directs a pan-African research initiative on decentralization of environmental management. Patrice did much communication and translation work for SRN to support himself through the DEA degree. He is currently completing his Ph.D. thesis at Orléans. SRN would like to thank members Philippe Auzel and Alain Froment for facilitating our support of Patrice.  To order Patrice’s book: Cultures Croisées, 1 av. Maurice de Vlaminck P. 64, 77680 Roissy-en-Brie, France.  Or call:  (33 0)1 60 28 34 04; fax: (33 0) 1 60 28 40 21

 Hilary Kaplan studied Comparative Literature at Yale University, with a concentration in literature and the environment. Her senior thesis on environment and gender in Haitian and Cape Verdean novels won the Biancamaria Finzi-Contini Calabresi Prize in Comparative Literature at Yale.  She coordinated the Environment, Literature and Public Policy working group at Yale, and has worked on translation and formatting for the working papers that appear on this site. After graduating in 2000, she spent one year working as the Magee Fellow for religion and social justice at Dwight Hall at Yale: Center for Public Service and Social Justice.  Her interests include environmental philosophies and activism, and theologies of social action. She currently works at the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco. SRN would like to thank CODESRIA personnel and partners Achille Mbembe, and Ebrima Sall, for facilitating our support of Hilary.  For a copy of Hilary’s prize winning senior essay in PDF, click here or in Microsoft Word, click here.  For a statement about SRN’s support of Hilary’s research, click here.

 Hubert Ngatcha Njila joined SRN toward the end of the first phase, assuring office management, translation, and communication.  A citizen of France of Cameroonian origin, Hubert is conducting field research in New Haven, Connecticut, on issues of race in the history of New Haven politics, particularly of New Haven’s police force. A doctoral candidate at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, Hubert has also forged affiliations with multiple centers and departments at Yale University, and has worked with SRN to envision the various ways that U.S.-Euro-African collaboration might take shape for research and education on cross-cutting environmental issues. 

 Abigail Ryder, Yale University class of 2002, took the seminar taught by SRN personnel Rebecca Hardin and Eric Worby under the auspices of the Ford Foundation’s “Crossing Borders” initiative to revitalize area studies.  The initiative here at Yale included the development of this course, taught at Yale with political scientist Arun Agrawal and Estienne Rodary, a geographer from the Laboratoire ERMES in Orléans who has conducted field research in Zimbabwe and Zambia. The course, to date taught both at Yale and at the University of Paris, Sorbonne, compares Africa and South Asia in terms of environment and development, and combines teaching with development of student proposals for field research.  Abigail conducted research under the supervision of one of SRN’s founding members, Philippe Auzel. Auzel works under the auspices of the European Union’s Community Forest Project in Cameroon, in conjunction with the Belgian Agronomy Institute, the University of Gembloux, and their Sylviculture Unit.  His work examines forest uses within logging areas in Cameroon around the Dja Reserve area; Abigail focused on the role of women in this larger project. SRN would like to thank Philippe Auzel for facilitating our support of Abigail; indeed for supporting her work more substantially than was possible for us to do.  For a copy of Abigail’s research report, click here. 

André Siamundélé is a graduate of Yale’s French Department, with a Ph.D. concentrating on francophone African literature under the supervision of SRN faculty advisory committee member Christopher Miller. Before coming to Yale University, Siamundélé worked in his native Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) as a trainer for the U.S. Peace Corps in Bukavu. He also worked at the Zairian Embassy in Nigeria. His pedagogical, diplomatic, and intellectual skills have made him central to elaborating the international and interdisciplinary components of SRN. He helped found the Environment, Literature, and Public Policy working group at Yale, under the auspices of the Whitney Humanities Center and the Council on African Studies. He did simultaneous translation and textual translation for the 1997 SRN conference at Yale, and coordinated the steering committee meeting of SRN in Orléans, France.  Since graduating from Yale in 1998, he has taught African literatures at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge, and at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.  His current work at Colby combines teaching and research with building African Studies programs and lecture series there. 

 Theresa Silla, Yale University class of 2002, is Ethiopian. She is a double major in Economics and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and hopes to work one day in environmental management issues on her home continent of Africa.  Theresa has received the prestigious Presidential Fellowship for work by Yale undergraduates in collaboration with municipal officials on New Haven community development issues. Working at city hall in New Haven has reduced her work on SRN, but during the first phase she did all of our administrative and office management work. 

 Pierre Roulet, a doctoral student at the Laboratoire ERMES at University of Orléans, France, is currently conducting research on trophy hunting in the Sangha River trinational region, with support from SRN and other sources. He has completed a Master’s degree in geography on Safari Hunting in northern Central African Republic (CAR). In 1999 he also completed a DEA (or predoctoral degree) on Safari hunting in the forests of southwestern Cameroon, under the direction of network members Serge Bahuchet and Rebecca Hardin, among others. He is interested both in the history of the activity, and in its role in transborder management systems for these tropical forests. Well versed in the politics and practices of big game hunting in his native France, Pierre’s work offers rigorous long-term study of this phenomenon in the buffer zones of protected areas in equatorial Africa. 

 Henri Zana, an archeologist from the Central African Republic (CAR) completed his Master’s degree in History at the University of Bangui, Center for Research and Documentation on the History and Archeology of Central Africa  (C.U.R.D.H.A.C.A.), under the supervision of SRN member Raymond Lanfranchi.  He has subsequently collaborated on the field research of cultural anthropologist Rebecca Hardin and archeologist Anna Roosevelt in the Sangha River region of CAR. He completed a DEA degree on the prehistory of forest settlement in Cameroon in 2000 at the Laboratoire ERMES, University of Orléans. During that degree work, Henri did translation work for SRN to fund his studies. He is currently conducting archeological research in CAR, toward his doctoral thesis, which will be under the direction of Central African archeologist Dr. Zangato, at the University of Paris at Nanterre. SRN would like to thank members Anna Roosevelt and Alain Froments for facilitating our support of Henri Zana.   For a copy of Henri's DEA thesis abstract, click here

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