May 2019: Dr. Robert Voeks receives HSS Distinguished Faculty Award!
The Department of Geography & the Environment congratulates Dr. Robert Voeks, recipient of the CSUF College of Humanities and Social Sciences' Distinguished Faculty Award for 2018. Over his 30-year career at CSUF, Dr. Voeks has been a prolific researcher and an outstanding educator.
Dr. Voeks' research focuses on the areas of biogeography (the study of the distribution of plants and animals) and ethnobotany (the study of the relationship between plats and people). Embodying geography's focus on fieldwork and exploration, Dr. Voeks has conducted research in all of the world's tropical landscapes (in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa). Since 2008, Dr. Voeks has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the journal Economic Botany, the premier international journal of ethnobotany. He is also the co-editor of the Springer book series Ethnobiology. During his time at CSUF, he has secured almost $1.1 million in external grants.
Dr. Voeks has taught a wide variety of classes at CSUF, including Global Environmental Problems, Latin America, Natural Vegetation, Global Cuisines, Tropical Rainforests, and Ecotourism. He has led study abroad programs to Brazil and Costa Rica, and he has mentored many undergraduate and graduate students at CSUF as well as at universities in Brazil and in Africa. This mentorship has taken many forms, including publication of research articles in peer-reviewed academic journals.
In 2015, Dr. Voeks received the Distinguished Service Award from the California Geographical Society, and in 2018 he received the President's Award from the Society for Economic Botany.
August 2020: Dr. Robert Voeks awarded Mary W. Klinger Award!
The Society for Economic Botany announced that the Mary W. Klinger Award, recognizing an outstanding recent book in the field of ethnobotany or economic botany, has been awarded to Robert A. Voeks’ The Ethnobotany of Eden: Rethinking the Jungle Medicine Narrative .
The Ethnobotany of Eden questions the popular belief that tropical rain forests are a particularly rich source of medicinal plants, in the process debunking both historical and modern misconceptions. Subjects addressed include Western perceptions of tropical forests and peoples, the history of biopiracy, the effects of migration on knowledge, and the importance of gender.
Robert Voeks, Ph.D. is a professor in the Department of Geography & the Environment at CSUF. His research emphasizes the African diaspora and South American ethnobotany.
Voeks became interested in this research many years ago while working on a medicinal plant project in Brazil. He noticed that most of the species he collected with local healers were not from primary tropical forests, but instead were collected in humanized spaces—especially home gardens, forest paths, and secondary forests that had in the past been cut and burned. This was inconsistent with what was widely touted as an important environmental narrative of the time, that is, that primary tropical forests were fonts of indigenous medicinal plants and that in the past many of these had been developed into life-saving pharmaceutical drugs, and consequently, these possible miracle cures were being sacrificed by the widespread deforestation that was occurring in Brazil and other tropical countries.
“I later termed this the ‘jungle medicine narrative.’ Over the years, I came to understand that much of what Westerners know about nature and people in tropical landscapes was, in fact, culturally constructed by outsiders—naturalists, travel writers, and missionaries—and often with hidden agendas,” says Voeks. Over the years, Voeks carried out further research on this topic in Brazil, as well as, in SE Asia and East Africa, which eventually culminated in The Ethnobotany of Eden.
“The big-picture message is that people relate to compelling stories much more than facts and figures. And in this era of so many pressing environmental challenges, it is tempting to fit the reams of data, which no one wants to hear, into stories (environmental narratives), with good guys and bad guys, possible calamitous outcomes, but with the chance for positive resolution if we all pitch in and do the right thing. My message is that stories are a very constructive way to make science and social science comprehensible to the general public, but it is critical to get the science right. Because once an environmental story enters into collective wisdom, for example, that the Amazon Forest is the green lungs of the world, which is nonsense, it is nearly impossible to eradicate.”
Though working in tropical forests all of his academic career, Voeks comments ironically, “I’ve always been extremely afraid of snakes. And outside of stepping on two venomous snakes in Borneo, I’ve never had a bad encounter.” To students he urges, “don’t let your fears and phobias stop you from pursuing your dream.”
Voeks is currently working on an etextbook project for use in the California Geography class. The book, California Dreamin’: A Geography of the Golden State is being written collaboratively with his colleague at CSU Stanislaus, Dr. Jennifer Helzer. Most importantly, the book will be open source and free to all students and faculty who choose to adopt it.
