Ph.D. School of Geography and the Environment, Environmental Change Institute, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, U.K.

M.A. International Relations, Economics, Latin America, and Emerging Markets, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, Bologna, Italy and Washington, D.C.

B.A. Public Policy and Spanish, Hamilton College, Clinton, New York

My research is composed of two primary streams that often overlap and converge. The first branch is top-down focused on global perspectives. The second thread is ethno-geographic, derived from participatory bottom-up approaches to document and analyze traditional knowledge among the Akawaio, Makushi, Arekuna, and Alleluia in the Guiana Highlands of South America. Additional interests include North American social movements, transfronterismo, and ​Indigenous communities such as the Coastal Miwok, Ohlone, Hupa, and Kumeyaay, focusing specifically on colonial and missionary histories, resistance, syncretism, rewilding, and revitalization. Ultimately, I aim to inform the field of historical ecological landscape with integral spiritual, psychological, and geographical perspectives.

Primary data are derived from multi-sited fieldwork among Pemon (Makushi, Arekuna, and Taurepan) and Ka’pon (Akawaio/Ingarikó and Patamona) members of the Carib linguistic family in the Rupununi Savannah and Pakaraima Mountains of Northern Amazonia. I rely on a network of local and international scholars, activists, development practitioners, educators, students, and associations to collaborate, establish trust, gain access, document, and share knowledge. I use landscape as a central theoretical framework to link disparate fields of historical ecology, spiritual ecology, and political ecology. My work transcends these domains and builds on wider fields of ethno-development, environmental anthropology, eco-phenomenology, psychology, health, medicine, botany, zoology, education, border studies, and human geography. It adds to scholarship on being, place, space, language, landscape, and religious studies. Perhaps most significant is my contribution to literature on the forests, mountains, savannahs, and rivers that compose the porous border landscape between Guyana, Brazil, and Venezuela.

The following questions guide my investigations: How are Indigenous natural resource management techniques and land ethics informed by spiritual and religious beliefs and practices? How do land use patterns and spiritual values co-evolve within landscape? What is the relationship between culture, nature, and spirit? What Indigenous knowledges and technologies are being used to mitigate and adapt to change? What are their limitations and scalabilities? How does land tenure, intellectual property rights, gender, art, and violence affect the conservation, development, storage, transmission, and management of traditional knowledge? What can be learned from current knowledge and technology partnerships between Indigenous peoples, local communities, NGOs, multilaterals, governments, and the private sector?

• GEOG 201: World Regional Geography
• GEOG 341: Nature and Society in California
• GEOG 352: Environment, Development and Sustainability
• GEOG 365: Globalization and Trade 
• ENVS 301: Place, Power, and the Environment
• BRS 330: Introduction to Migration Studies

Cooper, Daniel G. (2011). "Under Mount Roraima: the struggle to conserve a sacred landscape." Journal for Interdisciplinary Studies on Climate, Energy and Mobility. Berlin, Germany.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2015). Under Mount Roraima: the revitalization of a shamanic landscape and practice. Unpublished doctoral thesis, School of Geography and the Environment, Environmental Change Institute, St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, U.K.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2016). "The Contribution of Traditional Knowledge and Technology to Climate Solutions." A Knowledge Product for the Climate Investment Funds Administrative Unit, World Bank Group, Washington, D.C.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2018). "Romancing the stone: Ka’pon and Pemon perspectives of Guyana’s mineral landscape." Anthropology and Archeology, Journal for the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, Vol. 22.

Cooper, Daniel G., & Kruglikova, Nina (2019). "Augmented Realities: The Digital Economy of Indigenous Knowledge." Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change: Emerging Research on Traditional Knowledge and Livelihoods. International Labour Organization.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2019). "The revitalization of shamanic healthcare in Suriname." Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change: Emerging Research on Traditional Knowledge and Livelihoods. International Labour Organization.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2019). Chapter 25: Future Data and Knowledge Needs. Global Environment Outlook (GEO-6): Healthy Planet, Healthy People. United Nations Environment Programme. Nairobi, Kenya.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2019). "Beyond Ka’pon and Pemon ritual ant envenomation: the medicine, magic, and metaphor of landscape." Anthropology and Archeology, Journal for the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, Vol. 23.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2019). "The spiritual geography of landscape." PRism, Indigenous/First Nations theme and General Issue, Indigenous theorizing: Voices and representation, Volume 15, Issue 1.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2020). "Alleluia and the Akawaio: the spiritual geography of a highland revitalization movement" (pp. 239-255) in Leal Filho, W., King, V. T., & de Lima, I. B. (Eds.), Indigenous Amazonia, Regional Development and Territorial Dynamics: Contentious Issues. Springer Nature.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2020). "Alleluia: a highland shamanic revitalization movement." Guyana Folk and Culture. Guyana Cultural Association. Brooklyn, New York.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2020). "The spiritual geography of a more-than-human landscape." Anthropology and Archeology, Journal for the Walter Roth Museum of Anthropology, Vol. 24.

Cooper, Daniel G., & Rosales, Nohemia (2021). "Transfronterismo: A Fluid Borderland Identity and Movement." California Geographer, Vol. 60.

Cooper, Daniel G. (2022). "Strike Mission: El Salvador, Blockchain Technology, and Sustainable Development." United Nations 7th Multi-stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals.

Cooper, Daniel G. "Kanaima (e’toto) and the ecology of violence in the circum-Mount Roraima landscape." Sorcery in Amazonia: A Comparative Regional Exploration. Under review.

Cooper, Daniel G., & Kruglikova, Nina. "Psychogeography reimagined." Journal of Global Indigeneity. In press.

Cooper, Daniel G., & Whitaker, James. “Spoiled by COVID-19: Geontology, Pathogenesis, and Resistance among the Akawaio.” Medical Anthropology Quarterly. In preparation.

“The Alleluia Constitution.” In preparation.

A spiritual history of the Guiana Highlands. In preparation.

• Paruima Village Fishing
• Land of Many Waters
• Guyana
• The Bolivarian Revolution
• Kolla
• Land and Water
• Two Thumbs Up
• Summer 8s 2017
• Christ Church Regatta 2017

Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok: @land_of_many_waters