Greg Downey
Although trained in academic anthropology, I have long been interested in applying the discipline’s research methods, analytical insights, and critical awareness to problem solving. While still an undergraduate, I became interested in the relationship of culture to economic development, and as a graduate student, I worked as a design consultant and with human rights organizations. Although anthropological training can be applied in many ways in business, human rights, development, public health, and international relations, I believe that our versatile, robust research techniques are fundamental. Applied anthropologists pay close attention to how living conditions, decision making, and cultural understandings can be affected by myriad variables, from economic to ecological, biological to ideological, political to psychological. Unlike many social sciences, which may tend to favor one style of explanation, applied anthropology tends to be more intellectually flexible, with observations and data driving our understandings of social problems.
