Thomas Sheridan

Thomas E. Sheridan, Ph.D., is Research Anthropologist at the Southwest Center and Professor of Anthropology in the University of Arizona School of Anthropology. Tom has conducted ethnographic and ethnohistoric research in the Southwest and northern Mexico since 1971. He directed the Mexican Heritage Project at the Arizona Historical Society from 1982-1984, and was director of the Office of Ethnohistorical Research at the Arizona State Museum from 1997 to 2003. Courses taught: Southwest Land & Society (ANTH 418/518); Anthropology of Rural Mexico (ANTH 423/523);  Anthropology & History (ANTH 696B); and Conservation & Community (ANTH 696B). Since 1997, he’s been involved in land-use politics in Arizona and the Southwest. He served as chair of the Canoa Heritage Foundation, and has been heavily involved in Pima County’s visionary Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan since 1998, chairing the Ranch Conservation Technical Advisory Team. Tom was president of the Anthroplogy & Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association from 2003 to 2005.

Selected publications include: Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community of Tucson, 1854-1941 (UA Press, 1986);  Where the Dove Calls: The Political Ecology of a Peasant Corporate Community in Northwestern Mexico (UA Press, 1988);  Arizona: A History (UA Press 1995; 2012 rev ed);  Landscapes of Fraud: Mission Tumacacori, the Baca Float, and the Betrayal of the O’Odham (UA Press, 2006); and Stitching the West Back Together: Conservation of Working Landscapes(University of Chicago Press, 2014).  Research Interests include anthropology & history; conservation & community; production of space; wilderness and working landscapes; common property theory; ranching, urbanization, and environmentalism; political ecology of the American West; political ecology of northern Mexico; ethnology & ethnohistory of the Southwest.

Read Tom's contributions to the Journal of the Southwest