Citation for Distinguished Service

Citation for Distinguished Service

The Citation for Distinguished Service recognizes ethnobiologists who have served the Society and its members in indispensable ways over many years. The recognition highlights the contributions of service leaders whose work, often behind the scenes, has been vital to the Society. Members of the Executive Committee may select up to three recipients on an annual basis. Recipients of the Citation for Distinguished Service are recognized at the annual conference.

Citation for Distinguished Service Recipients

2024 Recipients

Denise Glover

I first became involved with the Society of Ethnobiology in 2001, when I presented one of my first papers on classification of plants in Tibetan medicine at Fort Lewis College in Durango. But my heart and soul really became linked to SoE when we hosted the annual conference at the University of Washington--Seattle in 2003. Several other graduate students and I assisted Gene Hunn with coordination, organization, and other volunteer work. I even drove one of the University vans for our fieldtrip up over Snoqualmie Pass to eastern Washington. I'll never forget when Cecil Brown asked me "So, how long have you been driving these vans [thinking I must have been hired help]?" to which I replied, "Oh, about 15 minutes" to which his eyes widened in concern! But we made it just fine (I took the responsibility of transporting some of my ethnobiological heroes very seriously) and my eyes were opened to the depth of knowledge our fieldtrip co-hosts James Selam and Gene Hunn shared with us all about the land and various species living in the area of native Sahaptin speakers. I was hooked.

It’s been my honor to serve the Society. I was Conference Coordinator from 2009–2014, I was Treasurer from 2014–2020, and I currently serve as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Ethnobiology. The Society has been my extended family, where I have been able to grow and mature as a scholar and a person. For those reasons, I have treasured relationships in SoE and I have dedicated myself to its causes (and I even wrote a song about ethnobiology and the Society!). There is no other group of people (and academics with heart) that I would rather hang with.

I am currently a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington, where my foundational love for SoE began all those years ago.

Ginny Popper

The Society of Ethnobiology is near and dear to my heart. Dick Ford first told me about the Society when I was a graduate student at the University of Michigan. I attended my first conference in 1981 at Columbia, Missouri and gave my first paper at the 1984 conference.

I served as Secretary/Treasurer of the Society 1999–2002, when I put renewal notices into a mailbox and I tediously dialed credit card numbers into the phone to process payments. Heather Trigg and I co-edited the Journal from 2008 to 2013.

The Society played a formative role in my development as a paleoethnobotanist. I loved the intimacy of the meetings, where my colleagues became my friends. Listening to papers on ethnobotany and linguistics broadened my research approach. Senior researchers were extremely generous with their time and advice as I navigated these new disciplines. I’m grateful to the Society for all it has been to me, and still is.

Heather B. Trigg

Currently, I am a Research Scientist at the Fiske Center for Archaeological Research at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Graduate Program Director for the Historical Archaeology MA program. I first became aware of the Society of Ethnobiology in 1985, when my advisor, Dr. Richard I. Ford, enabled me to attend the 8th annual Ethnobiology meeting in Boston. It was my first professional conference, and it was exciting because I got to meet the people whose work I had been reading. I was immediately taken by how supportive the society was of student research. Years later, in 2009, when one of my students won The Barbara Lawrence Award for Best Student Paper, it was one of my proudest moments.

The society has been a source of inspiration for me, from the founding members whose names are synonymous with ethnobiology to the influential research that the society continues to publish. As one of the journal editors, I was lucky to work with officers and board members who showed incredible energy and dedication to the society and the discipline.

My first opportunity to support the society was minor: at the 23rd annual meetings in Ann Arbor, I led a tour of an ethnobotany trail that I had helped install at the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens. For the most part, I enjoyed the society from the sidelines. I was finally able to give back in a substantive way in 2008 when Virginia Popper mentioned that the society was looking for a new journal editor. We decided that working together sounded appealing, and both edited every paper, trying to help the authors showcase their research to the best effect. In doing so, I learned a great deal about effective presentation and clarity of writing for my own work. For this opportunity and the scholarly inspiration through the years, I owe a debt of gratitude to the society.