Hudson Leonard

Hudson Leonard — Undergraduate Research Fellow

Neotropical Anthropology Laboratory (NAL)

Undergraduate Student, Anthropology, University of Kansas

Hudson Leonard is an Undergraduate Research Fellow at the Neotropical Anthropology Laboratory (NAL) and an undergraduate student majoring in Anthropology with minors in Psychology and Spanish at the University of Kansas. He is a 2025 recipient of the Carroll D. Clark Research Award, which supports his honors thesis research on Mapuche ethnobotany in southern Chile and Argentina.

Hudson’s honors project examines how plant knowledge, medicinal practices, and ecological relationships function as forms of cultural resilience and political resistance in contexts shaped by land dispossession, forestry expansion, and climate change. His research investigates how Mapuche communities sustain dynamic and adaptive knowledge systems despite long-standing structural marginalization, emphasizing the interdependence of ecological practice, cultural memory, and Indigenous sovereignty.

Within NAL, Hudson contributes to the laboratory’s work in environmental anthropology and environmental justice, with a particular focus on traditional ecological knowledge across the Americas. His research aligns closely with NAL’s commitment to documenting and amplifying Indigenous knowledge systems as living, future-oriented frameworks rather than static cultural traditions.

Hudson’s broader research interests include human–environment relationships, intergenerational knowledge transmission, and the intersections of ecological change, cultural memory, and political autonomy. Through his work, he seeks to demonstrate how Indigenous ecological practices challenge extractive models of development and offer alternative paradigms for land stewardship, collective well-being, and environmental ethics.

As an Undergraduate Research Fellow, Hudson’s work exemplifies NAL’s mission to support early-career scholars engaged in rigorous, ethically grounded research that connects ethnography, environmental justice, and public-facing anthropology.