Ian Parker is a graduate student in the department of anthropology at UC San Diego. Ian is interested in social and environmental interactions, including processes of articulation and emergence. His doctoral research focuses on social dynamics of marine conservation in the Raja Ampat archipelago of West Papua, Indonesia – a seascape of diverse species and peoples. In this marine littoral region, migration and trade have long shaped a mosaic of Austronesian and Melanesian communities. Interaction across boundaries of difference has long been important. Evidence suggests that settlement in northwestern New Guinea began as early as 40,000 years ago with migrations from Africa to northern Sahul. Ian is investigating how marine management practices among Papuan Beteo and Ma'ya people, NGOs and outsiders are a crucible through which different coexisting communities define their ties to place, their orientations to one another, and their ethical ideas about human social relations. Talk about origins is important to establish clan ownership of lands, social norms, as well as to determine in what ways to interact with strangers. With CARTA colleagues, Ian is interested in further examining correlations between ecology and social patterns (including language, resource use, and kinship). He believes that social anthropology can benefit from consilience- multiple lines of evidence and correlations, including genetic data on migration, studies of diet and nutrition, evolution and adaptation – in addition to ethnographic research. In particular, he hopes to contribute to studies of social-ecological systems, and adaptation to change. This might include ways ecological conditions shape human social relations: spatially, through what people eat, childhood socialization, and through examining how beliefs about the non-human environment influence specific practices.