Brian Codding

Professor

codding@ucsb.edu

4009 Bren Hall

Biography

Brian F. Codding is Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is jointly appointed in the Environmental Studies Program and Department of Geography, and affiliated with the American Indian and Indigenous Studies initiative.

Previously he joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah. There serving as Director of the Archaeological Center and Environmental and Sustainability Studies Program, and as an affiliate with the Global Change and Sustainability Center, Environmental Justice Lab, and Responsible Artificial Intelligence initiative. 

He earned a PhD and master’s degree in anthropology from Stanford University, where he was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. He earned a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary social science with a minor in philosophy from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Website :ORCiD

Specialization

Human-Environment Interactions, Socio-Environmental Systems, Behavioral Ecology, Environmental Justice, Environmental Data Science

Education

PhD, Anthropology, Stanford University

MA, Anthropology, Stanford University

BS, Social Sciences, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo

Research

Professor Brian Codding studies how humans and environments influence one another. His research explores these dynamics in the past, present, and future.

Current projects focus on collaborative, transdisciplinary partnerships with tribal communities to help document, sustain, and restore Indigenous social and environmental systems. This work includes reconstructing long-term human-environment relationships, identifying lasting ecological legacies of past land use decisions, quantifying sustainable resource use practices, supporting Indigenous-led environmental restoration, and modeling how these systems may respond to future climate change.

His research also contributes to the development and application of ecological theory to understand general features of human-environment dynamics. Ongoing projects focus on understanding the environmental and social challenges we face today, including unsustainability, biodiversity loss, climate change, inequality, conflict, and despotism.