Sub-Saharan Africa Consultant
Fmr. Literary examiner, Library of Congress
Alden is a cultural anthropologist who has lived and worked in the Congo for many years as a child, university student, secondary school teacher and Fulbright researcher. His passion, articulated in print and to live audiences as varied as Congolese villagers in Kokolopori and diplomats at the US Foreign Service Institute, has been to promote the use of African knowledge and African voices in African forest and wildlife conservation. He has been instrumental in developing BCI's research and program philosophy of Information Exchange, the idea that research is a two-way street and that local community's understandings of their environment are key assets useful in molding sustainable conservation programs. Alden recently retired from the Library of Congress where he transitioned to its in-house research entity The Kluge Center; there he continues African conservation-related research conducted during a previous appointment as a Kluge Research Fellow.