Andrew Tarter, Ph.D.

Interdisciplinary social scientist (anthropologist)

Andrew.Tarter[at]georgetown.edu

Welcome to my site. I frame my professional efforts on a tripartite model: I am part researcher; part practitioner; and part professor. I have spent the past decades studying, practicing, and teaching about how international development works–and often does not work–in countries facing tremendous and complex challenges, including Haiti, India, Niger, Sierra Leone, Mauritania, and others. My research, applied, and instructional experiences crosscut several complementary topics and approaches, including: agriculture; energy; rural livelihoods; natural resource management; research design; diverse stakeholder engagement; and gender and social inclusion in international development. 

Researcher

My academic training in anthropology—an inherently interdisciplinary social science—occurred at the University of Florida under the tutelage of one of the discipline’s best-known applied anthropologists and the recipient of the prestigious Praxis Award in applied anthropology, administered by The Washington Association of Professional Anthropologists (WAPA).

During the pursuit of the doctorate, my coursework was first supported by the U.S. Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Program (2 years) and later by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Program (NSF GRFP) (3 years). 

My long-term dissertation fieldwork was jointly supported by a NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (NSF DIGG) and a Wenner Gren Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Grant. Some of the research peripheral to my dissertation was supported by the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities.

My professional research has since been funded by U.S. Government agencies with domestic programs (ex., National Endowment for the Humanities) and international programs (ex., the U.S. Forest Service International programs), think-tanks (ex., the Stockholm Environment Institute), and multilateral donor institutions (ex., the Pan American Development Foundation and the World Bank).

Practitioner

My practitioner experiences include working in the cabinet of the Prime Minister of Haiti on policy and institutional reforms to strengthen international development regulations, through a Fulbright Public Policy placement (US Department of State). I bridged the researcher-practitioner divide when employed as a social science research associate with the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS), where I helped establish an agricultural extension research program in Haiti–a project supported by the U.S. Government intra-agency Feed-the-Future initiative. 

I have continued to engage in policy and institutional reform in international development through strategic placements in the major bilateral development agencies of the U.S. Government, supported by a Science and Technology Policy Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)–the oldest scientific organization in the world (historically helmed by such famous anthropologists as Margaret Mead and Franz Boaz) and publisher of the journal Science. I started my AAAS fellowship with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Global Development Lab–the Washington-based bureau focused on science, technology, innovation and strategic partnerships in international development; and completed my AAAS placement at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)–a new, unique, and innovative USG international development agency. I was subsequently hired and presently work at MCC as an Associate Director in the Gender and Social Inclusion practice group.

Professor

At the University of Florida, I taught anthropology courses, and language and culture courses, engaging subject material and experiences from my research and professional experiences. I am presently an adjunct professor in the Science, Technology and International Affairs (STIA) program, in the Walsh School of Foreign Service, at Georgetown University, Washington D.C., where I share my research and practitioner experiences in international development.

Please see the my research , consulting,  policy work , and teaching sections for more details.