Harald Prins |
Born and raised in the Netherlands, Harald E. L. Prins is an ethnohistorian and visual anthropologist. After his doctoraal at U. Nijmegen (’76), he earned a certificate in advanced 16mm filmmaking in New York (’80), and a PhD (New School for Social Research, ’88). As a tribal anthropologist for a Mi’kmaq Indian rights and land claims case throughout the 1980s, he successfully testified in the U.S. Senate (’90) and subsequently served as expert witness in Canadian courts. He also functioned as an international observer in Paraguay’s contested presidential elections (’93).
Prins has taught comparative history in the Netherlands and anthropology at Bowdoin College in Maine before coming to Kansas State University (KSU) in 1990. There he received several teaching honors, including KSU’s Presidential Award (’99) and the Coffman Chair for University Distinguished Teaching Scholars (’04–’05). Based on extensive fieldwork and advocacy research among Indigenous peoples in South and North America, he has published several dozen academic articles and book chapters in various languages.
In addition to authoring a book, The Mi’kmaq: Resistance, Accommodation, and Cultural Survival (’96), he co-edited American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega (’94). He also co-authored several major international anthropology textbooks, including Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge (’05), and co-edited several special academic journal issues. His major documentary film credits include co-authoring the international award-winning Oh, What a Blow That Phantom Gave Me! (’03) and Our Lives in Our Hands (’86)—a widely screened documentary about Mi’kmaq Indians also broadcast on public television. He also served as key advisor on the award-winning Wabanaki: A New Dawn (’96).
In addition to being a member of several professional juries, editorial, and advisory boards, Prins served a two-year term as President of the Society for Visual Anthropology and four years as Visual Anthropology Review Editor of the American Anthropologist. Harald Prins was recently appointed University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at KSU and also serves as guest curator for an exhibition on fieldwork and human rights at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
