Jennifer Coffman, Ph.D.
Jennifer Coffman, Ph.D., is the Associate Executive Director of the Office of International Programs, for which she primarily focuses on internationalization and environmental efforts at JMU.
Dr. Coffman teaches anthropology, Africana Studies, Environmental Studies, and IDLS courses. She established and directs JMU’s Field School in Kenya, an intensive summer program for undergraduate and graduate students to learn about contemporary Kenya, as well as its histories. She also established and oversees the JMU Farm Internship Program, sponsored by IBAVI. Currently, Drs. Coffman, Shealy, Bhuyan and Chamberlin are working on a project entitled the Defining Diversity Initiative.
Dr. Coffman earned her B.A. in Cultural Anthropology and Political Science at Duke University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has been working in Kajiado District, Kenya, since 1995. Her primary research examines the context in which community-based wildlife resource management has been posed as a solution to the environmental “problem” of wildlife conservation in southern Kenya, an area inhabited predominantly by self-identifying Maasai. Her ethnographic case studies, derived from Maasai communities, illustrate how ideals of sustainable development and wildlife conservation play out in the daily lives and goals of the people most directly affected by them. She has published and presented on this research, as well as on international educational exchanges between the United States and Africa, gender-based political asylum in the U.S. (specifically focusing on claimants fleeing female genital cutting), representations of Maasai indigeneity in the United States (e.g., via cultural tours, advertisements, websites that present cultural profiles, and political asylum cases). She directs the Art around the World Project, which is co-sponsored by the International Beliefs and Values Institute and the Office of International Programs. In 2006 and with a Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad award, Dr. Coffman led a five-week Seminar in Kenya for Virginia School Teachers.
