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I was born and raised in the Black Hills of South Dakota, geologically an "island in the prairie." My anthropological research on the cultures of Norway, Wales, Scotland and England eventually led me to a study of immigrants who settled in Iowa. I wrote the chapter on Welsh-Americans in American Immigrant Cultures: Builders of a Nation (David Levinson and Melvin Ember, editors; Macmillan, 1997, pp.935-941). My current research on ethnic identity concerns the Irish settlement of O’Neill, Nebraska.
In addition to studying those who settled on the prairies, I am active in land stewardship in central Iowa, where I have 85 acres of prairie reconstruction and 40 acres of oak savannah under restoration. Part of this work is funded by a WHIP grant from the Department of Natural Resources. My property also has an extensive riparian area, a hanging bog, and a sedge meadow. I have written about the importance of identifying and preserving sedge meadows for Midwest Woodlands and Prairies.
I helped establish an organization of Grinnell residents dedicated to the conservation and restoration of a large tract of Iowa woodland, grassland, and streams. I presented the ideas behind this organization, Pleasant Grove Land Preservation, Inc., in From Conservationists to Corporate landowners: A model for leveraging private funds to purchase large conservation areas, a paper for the Iowa Prairie Studies Conference in July, 2005.
As the new Wilson Professor of Enterprise and Leadership, I am interested in innovations that promise to benefit the economy of the Midwest. Currently I am exploring the possibilities of raising both native and exotic fiber crops for central Iowa’s plastics industry in order to help reduce the petrochemical content of consumer products and to provide an alternative to corn and soybean commodity crops for small farmers. Along with other members of a producers group, Creative Horizons of Iowa, LLC, I am raising experimental crops of kenaf, an African plant with long, strong fibers that can be used in biocomposite manufacturing. My earlier research focus of the electronics industry in the United Kingdom has now changed to the emerging biocomposites industry in Iowa.
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Doug Caulkins
Professor of Anthropology
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