Opening Convocation: Gary Nabhan

Gary Paul Nabhan, PhD, is an Arab-American writer, lecturer, food and farming advocate, rural lifeways folklorist, and conservationist who has been called the "father of the local food movement." His Opening Convocation address was titled "Renewing America's Food Traditions." Gary Nabhan has authored more than twenty books on natural and cultural history, conservation, and sustainable agriculture. In addition, he has lectured at universities in Mexico, Lebanon, Peru, Oman, Guatemala, and Italy, including Slow Food’s University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo. For his literary work and his grassroots conservation and community-based ethnobiology projects, Nabhan has been honored with the John Burroughs Medal for Nature Writing, a MacArthur Genius Fellowship, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Conservation Biology, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a Pew Fellowship in Conservation and Environment, and a Quivira Coalition award for excellence in science that contributes to “the radical center.” Dr. Nabhan recently accepted a tenured professorship as a Research Social Scientist based at the Southwest Center of the University of Arizona, his alma mater.