Richard (Rick) Feinberg

My MA research, completed in 1971, was with a Navajo community in New Mexico. My doctoral research was on the remote Polynesian island of Anuta in the southeastern Solomon Islands. Since then, I have continued to conduct research with the people of Anuta as well as several other Polynesian communities: Nukumanu Atoll in Papua New Guinea; Taumako in the Solomon Islands, and Atafu in Tokelau, a group of atolls just north of Samoa. My work has involved topics ranging from kinship and social organization to language, indigenous navigation and spatial cognition, and economic & political development. I served on the faculty of Kent State University from 1974 until my retirement in 2018. During that time, I spent almost thirty years on Kent's Faculty Senate, including several years on the executive committee and a year as Senate Chair. Since retirement, I have served as: Fulbright Distinguished Chair of Anthropology at Palacký University, Olomouc, in the Czech Republic; the American Anthropological Association's Section Assembly Convener; president of the Kent State University Retirees' Association; and on the executive boards of the Fulbright Association's Northeast Ohio Chapter as well as the Association of Senior Anthropologists (ASA, a section of the American Anthropological Association). I am currently president-elect of the ASA.