OUR STORY
founding of PGEF
who we are
advisory board

Dr. Robert K. Hitchcock
Ph.D in Anthropology
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

Chair, Department of Anthropology
Michigan State University

Robert K. Hitchcock is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at Michigan State University, where he has been since August, 2006. Previously, he was Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Anthropology and Geography of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as well as the Coordinator of African Studies and the Coordinator of Conflict and Conflict Resolution Studies. He earned a B.A. in Anthropology and History at the University of California, Santa Barbara (1971) and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology at the University of New Mexico (1982).

Hitchcock is a development-oriented anthropologist whose work focuses primarily on issues involving human rights, humanitarian assistance and relief, resettlement, and local level economic enhancement. The major groups with whom he works are indigenous peoples, refugees, rural women, small farmers, and those people affected by human rights violations and by human-induced and natural disasters. Much of his work is done in eastern and southern Africa and in the Great Plains and Great Lakes regions of the U.S. though he has also worked in Canada, Hawaii, Guatemala, and Peru. He incorporates archaeological and geographic methods into his work, for example, in calculating the impacts of infrastructure projects such as large dams and livestock development programs. Much of his research and development work has concentrated on the San (Bushmen) and Sotho-Tswana peoples of southern Africa.

In 1977-1979 Hitchcock served as a remote area development consultant to the government of Botswana and later, in 1980-1982, he was the Senior Rural Sociologist in the Division of Planning and Statistics, Ministry of Agriculture there. In 1983-84 he worked as the Planning Advisor and Research Manager in the National Refugee Commission (NRC) of the Government of Somalia, and from 1985-87 he was the Traditional Sector Specialist in the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives (MOAC) of the Government of Swaziland.

Over the past two decades, Hitchcock has worked on issues involving genocides and massive human rights violations affecting indigenous peoples and minorities, with particular emphasis on Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. From 1990 to the present Hitchcock has served as a member of the Panel of Environmental Experts (POE) for the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP), the largest water development project in Africa. In 2001 he examined the impacts of refugee resettlement in Namibia for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In 2000 and 2004 he participated in an evaluation of First People of the Kalahari (FPK), a San non-government organization engaged in human rights and development work in Botswana for the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA) and DANIDA, the Danish international development agency.

Hitchcock has worked for the World Bank, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the Ford Foundation, the Southern African Development Community (SADC), Scandinavian governments (e.g. those of Norway, Denmark), and various non-government organizations in Africa and the Americas. He is a founding member of the Committee for Human Rights of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) (1993) and the Human Rights and Human Diversity Initiative at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1997). From the late 1990s to December 2006, Hitchcock provided advice and assistance to the negotiating the legal teams involved in the case involving the San and Bakgalagadi and the government of Botswana over rights of people to return to, reside in, and make a living in the Central Kalahari Game Reserve, one of Africa's largest protected areas.

Hitchcock's current work includes assessing U.S. refugee policy as it affects the health and socioeconomic well-being of African refugees who have been resettled in the United States. He also continues to focus on international and domestic human rights law as it affects indigenous peoples, especially those who reside in remote areas in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas.

Select List of Publications

• Hitchcock, Robert K. and Samuel Totten (Eds.) (in process, 2007) Genocides of Indigenous Peoples. A Special Issue of Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. (in process, 2007) Organizing to Survive: Indigenous Peoples' Political and Human Rights Movements. New York, New York: Routledge Press.


• Robert K. Hitchcock and Megan Biesele (in process, 2007) The Ju/'hoansi San of Nyae Nyae Since Independence: Development, Democracy, and Indigenous Voices in Namibia. New York: Berghahn Books.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. and Thomas Koperski (2007) Genocides of Indigenous Peoples. In Dan Stone (Ed.) The Historiography of Genocide, London: Palgrave.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. (2006) 'We Are the Owners of the Land': The Struggle of the San for the Kalahari and Its Resources. In Updating the San: Image and Reality of an African People in the 21st Century


• Hitchcock, Robert K., Kazunobu Ikeya, Megan Biesele, and Richard B. Lee, eds. Pp. 229-256. Senri Ethnological Studies 70. Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. and Diana Vinding, eds. (2004) Indigenous Peoples' Rights in Southern Africa. Copenhagen, Denmark: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. (2003) Human Rights and Indigenous Peoples in Africa and Asia. In Human Rights and Diversity: Area Studies Revisited, David P. Forsythe and Patrice McMahon, eds. Pp. 205-228. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. And Alan J. Osborn, eds. (2002) Endangered Peoples of Africa and the Middle East: Struggles to Survive and Thrive. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. (2002) Removals, Politics, and Human Rights. Cultural Survival Quarterly 26(1):25-26.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. (1999) Indigenous Peoples' Rights and the Struggle for Survival. In Richard B. Lee and Richard Daly (Eds.) The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers, pp. 480-486. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. (1999) Indigenous Populations, Genocide of. In Encyclopedia of Genocide, Volume II, pp.. 175-184. Santa Barbara, California and London: ABC-Clio.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. and Tara M. Twedt (1997) Physical and Cultural Genocide of Various Indigenous Peoples. In Samuel Totten, William S. Parsons, and Israel W. Charny (Eds )Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views.. 483-534. New York and London: Garland Publishing.


• Hitchcock, Robert K. and Tara M. Twedt (1995) Physical and Cultural Genocide of Various Indigenous Peoples. In Genocide in the Twentieth Century: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views. Pp. 483-534. New York and London: Garland Publishing.


• Lee, Richard B., Robert K. Hitchcock, and Megan Biesele, eds. (2002) The Kalahari San: Self-Determination in the Desert. Cultural Survival Quarterly 25(1):8-61.


• Schweitzer, Peter P., Megan Biesele, and Robert K. Hitchcock, eds. (2000) Hunters and Gatherers in the Modern World: Conflict, Resistance, and Self-Determination. Oxford, England and New York, New York: Berghahn Books.


• Totten, Samuel, William S. Parsons, Jr. and Robert K. Hitchcock (2002) Confronting Genocide and Ethnocide of Indigenous Peoples: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Definition, Intervention, Prevention, and Adequacy. In Alexander Laban Hinton (Ed.) Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide, pp. 54-91. Berkeley and London: University of California Press.

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