Gregory W. Knapp
Professor — Ph.D., University of Wisconsin at Madison
Associate Professor and Director, Sustainability Studies

Contact
- E-mail: gwk@utexas.edu
- Phone: 512.232.1588
- Office: RLP 3.712
- Office Hours: Thursdays 1-2 pm or by appointment
- Campus Mail Code: A3100
Interests
Adaptive dynamics, cultural landscapes, archaeology, and sustainability of Andean agriculture; regional identities, ethnogeography, linguistic geography and ethnic territoriality; mapping; modernization as contextualized in historical cultural ecology and feminist political ecology; history of geographic thought; Latin America.
Biography
Gregory Knapp received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley, in Mathematics and Economics with Distinction in General Scholarship, and his PhD in Geography (minor in Anthropology) from the University of Wisconsin. He taught at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities before joining the University of Texas faculty in 1984.
Knapp’s research has focused on four themes in cultural and regional geography: adaptive dynamics of agriculture; ethnic territoriality and mapping; modernization contextualized in historical cultural ecology; and the history of geographic ideas and researchers. These themes have been explored in Latin America, with special attention to Andean South America and Ecuador.
The adaptive dynamics approach in cultural and political ecology emphasizes local decision making, while also recognizing the salience of particular environmental, cultural, social, economic, and political contexts as they change over time. This approach is consistent with attention to cultural landscapes in the tradition of Carl Sauer. In addition to publishing on reconstructing prehistoric landscapes and demography in the Andes, Knapp was involved in the first major international study of the impacts of climate change on Andean agriculture, where he argued for policies prioritizing empowerment of local actors, maximizing local adaptive flexibility. Supervised student research has included the persistence of smallholder farming (with Katia Raquel Avilés-Vázquez) and discourses on water management practices (with Cyrus Reed and Patricia Mothes). This theme has continued to be included in his recent research on agricultural modernization in the Andes.
A second major research theme has been the critical study of regional identities, ethnic territoriality and mapping. Knapp has organized conferences on the ethnic geography of Latin America and regional identities in Texas and Mexico. He co-authored a standard textbook on the geography of South America, published one of the first studies of the ethnogeography of Ecuador and co-edited a pioneering special issue of a refereed journal devoted to the topic of participatory mapping. Supervised student research on this theme has included ethnohistory and territoriality in Nicaragua (with Karl Offen), culture, place and primary education in Ecuador (with Jodi Vender) and cultural identities and tourism in Peru (with Shayna Friday). Knapp’s current research concerns language persistence and salience for identity.
A third theme has been the contextualization of modernization (both neoliberalism and social democracy) in historical cultural ecology, as the latest phase of humanity’s progressive achievement of greater efficiencies through collaboration, and in feminist political ecology and post-development theory. Modernization has both advantages and disadvantages, as recently addressed in discourses about sustainability. Supervised student research on this theme includes the role of NGOs in creating distinctive landscapes (with Juanita Sundberg and Thomas Perreault), the importance of food and foodways (with Naya Jones) including the role of female empowerment in creating distinctive Kitchenspace (with Maria Elisa Christie), and the empowerment of indigenous communities and women in the face of larger scale modernization processes (with Mary Brook, David Salisbury, Gregory Schwartz, Maria Belén Noroña Salcedo and Sophie Fuchs). His current work on this theme involves greenhouse floriculture in Ecuador.
A fourth theme has been the history of geographic thought, both in terms of institutions and in terms of regions. Knapp is an editor for the Library of Congress relating to bibliographies of Western South America, and has also authored departmental and biographical histories in the discipline of geography.
Knapp has received three separate Fulbright Fellowships, as well as other grants. He has been elected to national offices in the Association of American Geographers and Conference of Latin American Geographers; the latter honored him with its Outstanding Service Award. He was elected President of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, Alpha chapter at the University of Texas.
Knapp served for two consecutive four year terms as Department Chair (1996-2004), crafting the Urban Studies major, initiating UT’s partnership with the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, changing the department’s name to “Geography and the Environment,” and co-sponsoring the creation of the Institute of Environmental Science. After his chairmanship he served for five years as Chair of the Graduate Studies Committee and Graduate Advisor (2007-2012). Most recently, as co-chair of the the University’s BA in Sustainability Studies committee he was active in helping bring this new major to fruition in the 2016-2018 undergraduate catalog. He currently serves a Director of the Sustainability Studies major.
Knapp’s current teaching at the undergraduate level includes a Large Format Signature Course in Latin American Environmental History and Sustainability (recipient of a Grand Prize, Sustainability and Ethics Course Development Award competition), a large course in Geography of Latin America which meets one of the University’s core requirements, an upper division course on Nature, Society and Adaptation, and a faculty-led study abroad course on Nature, Society and Sustainability which has been conducted in Argentina and (currently) Ecuador. Knapp welcomes honor’s thesis students working on issues related to his research themes.
Knapp’s graduate level teaching includes a seminar, Latin America: Culture, Environment and Development which is open to all students. He has supervised 40 graduate dissertations and theses; former students include faculty at such institutions as the University of British Columbia, Oberlin, Virginia Tech, and the University of Richmond, among others, as well as leaders in government, non-governmental organizations, journalism, education, and business. He continues to welcome applications from prospective advisees who are interested in critical and innovative field work in Latin America.
Selected Publications by Research Theme
Adaptive Dynamics and Cultural Landscapes
1988 (co authored) The Effects of Climatic Variation on Agriculture in the Central Sierra of Ecuador, in The Impact of Climatic Variations on Agriculture. Volume 2: Assessments in Semi-Arid Regions., M. L. Parry, T. R. Carter and N. R. Konijn, eds., pp. 383-493. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
1988 (co-edited with N. Allan and C. Stadel), Human Impact on Mountains. Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield.
1991 Andean Ecology: Adaptive Dynamics in Ecuador. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
1999. (with P. Mothes) Quilotoa Ash and Human Settlements in the Equatorial Andes, pp. 139-155 in Actividad Volcánica y Pueblos Precolombinos en el Ecuador, Patricia Mothes, Coordinator. Quito: Ediciones Abya Yala.
2007. The Legacy of European Colonialism, in The Physical Geography of South America, edited by T. Veblen, K. Young, and A. Orme, pp 279-288, Oxford University Press.
2010. The Andes: Personal Reflections on Cultural Change, 1977-2010, Journal of Cultural Geography 27:307-316.
2019. Strategically Relevant Andean Environments, Chapter 1 in Linda J. Seligmann and Kathleen S. Fine-Dare, eds., The Andean World, Routledge Worlds Series, Routledge, pp. 17-28.
Ethnogeography and Regional Geography, Mapping
1995 (with C. Caviedes) South America. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
1987 Geografia Quichua de la Sierra del Ecuador. Quito: Ediciones Abya Yala. (First Edition; third edition 1991)
2003 (with P. Herlihy, guest eds.) Participatory Mapping of Indigenous Lands in Latin America, special issue of Human Organization. Volume 62, number 4.
2019. The Changing Kichwa Language Map, in Stanley Brunn and Roland Kehrien, eds., Handbook of the Changing World Language Map. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-73400-2_51-1.
Modernization
2002 (editor) Latin America in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges and Solutions. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2015. Mapping Flower Plantations in the Equatorial High Andes, Journal of Latin American Geography 14(3): 229-244.
2017. Human Ecology, in The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology, edited by Douglas Richardson, Noel Castree, Michael E. Goodchild, Aubrey Kobayashi, Weidong Liu, and Richard A. Marston, pp. 3392-3400. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg0477
2017. Mountain Agriculture for Global Markets: The Case of Greenhouse Floriculture in Ecuador. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 107(2) , 511-519. DOI: 10.1080/24694452.2016.1203282.
History of Thought and Bibliographic Reviews
1998. Geography at the University of Texas at Austin: A Departmental History, The Southwestern Geographer 2: 95-123.
2005 (with W. Doolittle). Terry G. Jordan-Bychkov, 1938-2003, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95(2): 462-470.
2016 Geography: Western South America, pp. 157-169 in Handbook of Latin American Studies: No. 71: Social Sciences, edited by Tracy North and Katherine D. McCann. Austin: University of Texas Press.
2020. (forthcoming). Trajectories of Personal Archiving: Practical and Ethical Considerations. Geographical Review 110:1.Special Double Issue, Integrating Research Methods in 21st Century Geography, edited by Kendra McSweeney and Antoinette WinklerPrins, January 2020.