Eric HirschAssociate Professor of Environmental Studies
About Eric Hirsch
Bio
An environmental and economic anthropologist by training, Hirsch’s research focuses on what it means to experience, enact, and embody economic growth, especially in places acutely affected by weather and climate extremes. His first book, Acts of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru (Stanford University Press, 2022), investigated these topics in southern Andean Peru’s Colca Valley. His newer work, scoped more comparatively between Peru, the Maldives, and the United States, asks about growth in the context of adaptation projects, Indigenous community advocacy, and infrastructure associated with resilience.
Education
B.A. (Anthropology and English), Columbia University, 2009
M.A. (Sociocultural Anthropology), University of Chicago, 2012
Ph.D. (Sociocultural Anthropology), University of Chicago, 2016
Peer reviewed publications
Please email me if you need a copy of one of my publications and do not have library access.
Book
Hirsch, Eric. 2022. Acts of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Peer-reviewed research articles
- Reyes-García, Victoria, and the LICCI Network (53 co-authors, incl. Eric Hirsch). 2024. “Indigenous peoples and local communities report ongoing and widespread climate change impacts on local systems and livelihoods.” Communications Earth and Environment 5(29): 1-10.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2023. “Forced Emplacement: Flood Exposure and Contested Confinements, from the Colony to Climate Migration.” Environment and Society: Advances in Research (Fall 2023 issue on “Fire and Flood). 14(1): 14-22.
- Paulson, Susan, Eric Hirsch, and Jonathan DeVore. 2022. “Caring Masculinities: Stories of Interspecies Love in the Andes and Atlantic Forest.” General Anthropology Bulletin 29(1): 10-14.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2020. “Hidden Treasures: Marca Perú (PeruTM) and the Recoding of Neoliberal Sustainability in the Peruvian Andes.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 15(3): 245-269.
- Hirsch, Eric, Chelsey Kivland, and Yana Stainova. 2020. “Self Exposures: The Political Arts of Ethnoracial Identification in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Introduction to Special Issue on “Arts of Exposure.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies 15(3): 201-218. (equal co-authorship)
- Ismael Vaccaro, Eric Hirsch, and Irene Sabaté. 2020. “The Emergence of the Global Debt Society: Governmentality and Profit Extraction through Fabricated Abundance and Imposed Scarcity in Peru and Spain.” Focaal 87: 46-60.
- Devore, Jonathan, Eric Hirsch, and Susan Paulson. 2019. “Conserving Human and Other Nature: A Curious Case of Convivial Conservation from Brazil.” Anthropologie et Sociétés 43(3): 31-58.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2018. “Remapping the Vertical Archipelago: Mobility, Migration, and the Everyday Labor of Andean Development.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology. 23(1): 189-208.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2017. “Investment’s Rituals: ‘Grassroots’ Extractivism and the Making of an Indigenous Gold Mine in the Peruvian Andes.” Geoforum Vol. 82: 259-267.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2017. “The Unit of Resilience: Unbeckoned Degrowth and the Politics of (Post)Development in Peru and the Maldives.” Journal of Political Ecology. 24(1): 462-475.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2016. “Mediating Indigeneity: Public Space and the Making of Political Identity in Andean Peru.” PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. 39(1): 95-109.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2015. “‘It Won’t Be Any Good to Have Democracy if we Don’t Have a Country’: Climate Change and the Politics of Synecdoche in the Maldives.” Global Environmental Change 35: 190-198.
Peer-reviewed contributions to edited volumes
- Hirsch, Eric. 2024. “‘Not Like it Used to Be’: Contending with the Altered Agricultural Calendar in Peru.” In Routledge Handbook of Climate Change Impacts on Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, edited by Victoria Reyes Garcia. London: Routledge.
- Paulson, Susan, Jonathan DeVore, and Eric Hirsch. 2022. “Convivial Conservation with Nurturing Masculinities in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest.” In Convivial Futures. Views from Tomorrow, edited by Frank Adloff and Alain Caillé. Columbia University Press/Transcript Publishing. pp.113-125.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2020. “Ethnicity as Potential: Abundance, Competition, and the Limits of Development in Andean Peru’s Colca Valley.” In Ethnicity, Commodity, In/Corporation, edited by John L. Comaroff, Jean Comaroff, and George Paul Meiu. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 94-119.
- Hirsch, Eric. 2020. “Sustainable Development.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology, edited by Mark Aldenderfer. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Hirsch, Eric and Kyle Jones. 2019. “Hip Hop and Guinea Pigs: Contextualizing the Urban Andes.” In The Andean World, edited by Kathleen Fine-Dare and Linda Seligmann. London: Routledge. (Series: The Routledge Worlds). pp. 555-569.
Grants and awards
- External Project Funding
2024-27 “The Agricultural Futures Archive: Rural & Urban Growers in the Shadow of the Solar
Panel” Mellon Foundation – Grantmaking Area: Higher Learning
Role: PI
Award amount: $500,000
2025-27 Early Career Faculty Innovator Program Grant
NSF National Center for Atmospheric Research
Role: PI
Award amount: $250,000
*Proposal selected; all grants in 2025 cohort halted due to US Executive Orders
2024-25 “Reckoning with Lancaster – Year 1: Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and the Land
Question”
Mellon Foundation – Grantmaking Area: Humanities for All Times
Role: Faculty Fellow (PI: Jon Stone)
Award amount: $500,000 (co-managing year 1 budget of total $1.4 million grant)
2019-22 “Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts”
European Research Council/Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ICTA
Role: Research Partner for Peru (PI: Victoria Reyes-García)
Award amount: $5000 + cohort workshop support
2021 Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa
Role: Fellow in Residence
2017 “After Development: Reconsidering Investment’s Promises with Participant Testimony”
Wenner-Gren Foundation Engaged Anthropology Grant
Role: PI
Award amount: $5000
2015-16 Mellon Foundation Hanna Holborn Gray Dissertation Fellowship
Award amount: $60,000
2014-15 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship
Award amount: $25,000
2013-14 Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant
Award amount: $9,000
2013-14 Inter-American Foundation Grassroots Development Fellowship
Award amount: $25,000 + cohort workshop support
2013-14 UC Irvine Institute for Money, Technology, and Financial Inclusion Research Grant
Award amount: $10,000 + cohort workshop support
2013-14 Fulbright Scholarship, Institute of International Education (declined)
2012 Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship
Award amount: $5,000 + cohort workshop support
2011-12 Foreign Language and Area Studies Title VI Fellowship for Quechua language instruction
Award amount: $6,000 as course tuition
- Internal Grants and Awards: Franklin & Marshall College
2024 Committee on Grants Faculty Research Grant ($1000)
2024 Hackman Summer Student Scholars Fund ($6000)
2024 Bolton Humanities and Social Sciences Exploration Grant ($1000)
2024 Finalist, Affordability Awards (for accessible course materials), F&M Diplomatic Congress
2022-23 Catalyst Fund Grant for “Climate Migration in Five Communities: A Pilot Study” ($10,000)
2021-22 Susan and Benjamin Winter Visual Arts Center Cross-Pollinator Residency
2021-22 Center for Sustained Engagement with Lancaster Seed Grant ($9,500)
2020 F&M Faculty Center Academic Innovation Grant ($500)
2019-20 Center for Sust. Engagement with Lancaster Seed Grant and Student Scholars Fund ($6000)
2019 Hackman Summer Student Scholars Fund ($10,000)
2019 Research Travel Grants (Peru), Office of College Grants/Committee on Grants ($5,000)
2018-19 Invited participant, Environments Mellon Humanities Colloquium ($1000 + workshop support)
- Internal Grants and Awards: University of Chicago
2016 Wayne C. Booth Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Office of the Provost
2016 Ignacio Martín Baró Prize Lectureship in Latin American Studies
2015 Pozen Family Center for Human Rights Prize Lectureship
2012 Center for Latin American Studies Field Research Grant
2010-2015 University Fellowship for Graduate Study (declined 2014-15)