Interdisciplinary Research: Biology and History Converge with New Book Co-edited by Liliana Dávalos and Paul Gootenberg

Liliana Dávalos, a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution and Co-PI of STRIDE, has recently partnered with Paul Gootenberg, SUNY Distinguished Professor of History and Sociology to collaborate on a topic of mutual interest--the origins of cocaine.

Dr. Dávalos has been highly involved with STRIDE from its inception for several reasons, including its interdisciplinary nature; A research project beteen a biologist and a historian is about as interdisciplinary as it gets.Together the pair have taken to co-editing a book entitled, The Origins of Cocaine: Colonization and Failed Development in the Amazon Andes. Released in June 2018, the book examines how the governments of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia developed agricultural settlement programs during the 1960s in each respective country’s Amazonian frontier lowlands. By the later part of the 1980s, those same areas had become known centers for the production of an illicit cocaine trade.

 Dávalos is quoted as stating, ‘it’s exceedingly rare for different disciplines to examine a similar problem and draw parallel conclusions with social issues such as this.’ For a more in-depth report of this collaboration, please click the link below to read the full article by Glenn Jochum, Cocaine and Colonization: Stony Brook Professors Meet at the Crossroads of History and Biology.

Link to full article: https://news.stonybrook.edu/alumni/cocaine-and-colonialism-stony-brook-professors-meet-at-the-crossroads-of-history-and-biology/