Biography

Daniel Tubb is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Canada, and an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He is the author of the book Shifting Livelihoods Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia, and co-editor of Letters from the Future: How New Brunswickers Confronted Climate Change and Redefined Progress.

Dr. Tubb has ongoing research on oil palm plantations and agrarian change in Colombia, on the impacts of resource projects in their early buzz phase, on rural issues, and on smart-climate forestry. Dr. Tubb holds a PhD in Anthropology from Carleton University, an MA in Political Economy from Carleton University, and a BA from Trent University.

He was a Fellow at the Program in Agrarian Studies at Yale University from 2014 to 2016 and is a member of the Racial Equality, Cultural Difference, Environmental Conflicts, Racism in the Black Americas at the National University of Colombia, in Bogotá. He has served as a member on the board of the Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies (2017-2020), was the admin of the website of the Anthropology and Environment Society of the American Anthropology Association (2012-2020), is a member of the International Development Studies Program at the University of New Brunswick Fredericton, and between 2018 and 2023, he was the English Book Review Editor of Anthropologica, the journal of the Canadian Anthropology Society. He is the Treasurer of the Canadian Anthropology Society (2021-2023).

Informal Biography

Daniel Tubb is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton and an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa. Trained at Carleton University in the late 2000s as an anthropologist, he has written and edited books and academic articles on Colombia and New Brunswick, writing, small-scale and artisanal mining, violence, and citizenship. He teaches widely in Anthropology and considers himself a sociocultural and environmental anthropologist, but he also describes himself as an ethnographer and a political economist working on Colombia and New Brunswick.

His book, Shifting Livelihoods: Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia (University of Washington Press, 2020) is about gold mining in Colombia. It shows how people employ various methods to extract gold in the rainforests of the Chocó, in northwest Colombia. Through an ethnography of gold that examines the movement of people, commodities, and capital, Shifting Livelihoods investigates how resource extraction reshapes a place. In the Chocó, gold enables forms of “shift” (rebusque)—a metaphor for the fluid livelihood strategy adopted by forest dwellers and migrant gold miners alike as they seek informal work amid a drug war. Mining’s effects on rural people, corporations, and politics are on view in this fine-grained account of daily life in a regional economy dominated by gold and cocaine.

He co-edited Letters from the Future: How New Brunswickers Confronted Climate Change and Redefined Progress (Chapel Srtreet Edtitions, 2021) with Abram Lutes and Susan O’Donnell, which presents the hopes and aspirations of diverse New Brunswickers for a more equitable, sustainable, and vibrant province, as an exercise of specualtive non-fiction.

He is working on a new book, as well as new research projects in Colombia and New Brunswick.

Short Informal Biography for Introductions

Daniel Tubb is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Brunswick. Tubb is a sociocultural and environmental anthropologist, and he has written a book and articles on Colombia, small-scale mining, violence, and citizenship. Currently, he is working on new books and research projects in Colombia.

Prospective Students

If you are a prospective graduate student wishing to study with Dr. Tubb, please read his letter to students, and send a brief inquiry to dtubb@unb.ca.

Updated April 29, 2023.