Dr. Ben Fitzhugh

Biography

Ben Fitzhugh is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Washington. He earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1996. His research focuses on human-environmental dynamics and archaeological histories, with a particular emphasis on maritime and coastal hunter-gatherers in the North Pacific. Fitzhugh addresses critical questions of human vulnerability and resilience in remote subarctic environments. His ongoing work includes community-based collaborations in Kodiak, Alaska, combining archaeology, paleoecology, and ethnohistory through oral storytelling, which bridges deep histories, resilient fisheries stewardship, colonial disenfranchisement, and contemporary cultural revitalization. He is also concerned with future food security and sovereignty research in youth education. Fitzhugh collaborates widely with scholars across various disciplines in the atmospheric, earth, and biological sciences, taking a historical ecological perspective on how humans adjust to and live within their environments. His research involves international collaborations to explore ecological and archaeological histories of the North Pacific Rim. In 2014, he coordinated a comparative marine ecological working group called Paleoecology Subarctic Seas (PESAS), which unites paleoclimate, paleoecology, archaeology, and history to investigate the similarities and differences in human-environmental co-evolution in the subarctic North Pacific and North Atlantic during the Glacial Maximum. In 2018, he served on the Governing Board of the Oceans Past Initiative, a consortium of archaeologists and historians interested in the histories of human engagement with marine life.

Research Interests