John Richard Stepp

John Richard Stepp teaches at the University of Florida in the Department of Anthropology and Tropical Conservation and Development Program. He is also a visiting professor at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy and was the Wilder Professor of Botany at the University of Hawai'i. He has worked in biocultural and environmental conservation over the last two decades throughout the tropics. His research explores persistence, change and variation of traditional ecological knowledge and ethnobiology. Much of this work has explored wild food plants and medicinal plants. His work has also focused on patterns and causes in the distribution of biological and cultural diversity (biocultural diversity) on both regional and global scales. He has served as president of the International Society of Ethnobiology and the Society for Ethnobotany (formerly the Society for Economic Botany). He is currently the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Ethnobiology and a regional councillor for Slow Food USA. He is the recipient of the Society for Ethnobiology Barbara Lawrence Award and, with colleagues, an Emerald Literati Award for Outstanding Author Contribution. In 2018, he was awarded a University of Florida Research Foundation Professorship.