Assistant Professor of Sustainability and Environmental Studies

Year Joined RCNJ: 2026

Contact Information

  • Phone: 201-684-7748
  • Email: ahoffma8@ramapo.edu
  • Office: G-216
  • Office Hours: Monday's 11:30-2pm, Thursday's 4-5pm and by appointment

Education:

Ph.D., Sociocultural Anthropology with a Graduate Minor in Native American and Indigenous Studies, Graduate Certification in Criticism and Interpretive Theory, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2026

M.A., Sociocultural Anthropology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, 2022

B.A., Sociology and Philosophy with Minors in Anthropology and Classics (Honors, summa cum laude), University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2015.

Courses Offered:

  • ENST 209: World Sustainability
  • ENST 210: Ecological Literacy
  • ENST 335: Ecology, Society, and the Sacred

Teaching and Research Interests:

Human-animal studies; multispecies ethnography; environmental studies; zooarchaeology; canid-human relations; wildlife conservation; Native American and Indigenous studies; Black studies; policing; settler-colonial studies; embodiment and phenomenology; death and dying; feminist and queer methodologies; writing studies; neurodiversity.

I am an interdisciplinary environmental anthropologist who specializes in research and writing beyond the human. More specifically, I am interested in processes of multispecies care, communication, and community-building. A parallel area of research specialization is Indigenous studies and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK), and how structures of settler-colonialism impact our relations with the more-than-human world.

My scholarship is informed by a decade working as a caretaker and educator in animal sanctuaries for wild-type and exotic canids—wolves, coyotes, dingoes, singing dogs, foxes, and various crosses or “hybrids” of these species—who are rescued from the exotic pet trade, fur farms, and road-side zoos. In this capacity, I have assisted in the lifelong care and behavioral rehabilitation of hundreds of animals, constructed dozens of animal habitats, and coordinated experiential educational programs with socialized ambassador wolves and wolfdogs for public audiences. I have received professional training in humane wildlife handling and chemical immobilization, as a humane euthanasia technician, and as a Certified Professional Canine Nutritionist (CPCN).

My current book project is a multispecies ethnography based on my time in wildlife sanctuaries which explores the following questions: What are the ethical bases of our kinships and politics with more-than-human others? How do humans and other animals negotiate the boundaries of multispecies community under conditions of precarity and structural violence? What forms of love, solidarity, and justice take shape under the banner of “sanctuary”? An overarching goal of the work is to demonstrate how caring for other animals across radical difference not only disrupts notions of human supremacy or “anthropocentrism,” but also catalyzes the formations of queer kinships and anticolonial solidarities. The project also seeks to reconceptualize narratives of animal domestication and canid ontology broadly construed, interrogating the domestic-wild binary as an outgrowth of colonial nature-culture logics.

Other projects in development include an ethnography on the politics of reservation dog (colloquially “rez dogs”) management and access to veterinary care in Tribal Nations. This research examines the divergence between settler and Indigenous practices and ideologies of “pet keeping” or relating to other animals. Another nascent project is a historiography of 19th and 20th century U.S. predator extermination campaigns and settler-colonial politics of memory, and discursive of Indigenous humans and nonhumans as “domestic terrorists.”

Recent Publications:

Hoffman, A.D., Amanda Daniela Cortez, Jenny L. Davis, Katelyn J. Bishop, Alida de Flamingh, and Ripan S. Malhi. 2026. “In Dire Straits: The Resurrection and Extraction of the Dire Wolf, and the Current Colonial Basis of De-extinction Science.” Ethnobiology Letters 17(1): 53-66. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14237/ebl.17.1.2026.1975

Hoffman, A.D. 2025. “Queering Sanctuary and Un/becoming with Wolf/Dogs.” Environmental History Now, November 18. https://envhistnow.com/2025/11/18/queering-sanctuary-and-un-becoming-with-wolf-dogs/

Articles:                      

Birchmier, Chelsea, A.D. Hoffman, Logan Middleton, A. Naomi Paik, and Angela Ting. 2021. “Towards Abolitionist Unionism: Resisting Pandemics, Policing, and Austerity at the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign.” Journal of Academic Freedom 12(1): https://www.aaup.org/JAF12/toward-abolitionist-unionism-resisting-pandemics-police-and-academic-austerity-university#.Yaaexi1h124

Hoffman, A.D. 2019. “Lupine Sensibilities: Dynamically Embodied Intersubjectivity between Humans and Refugee Wolves.” Refract: An Open Access Visual Journal 2(1): 133-164. https://doi.org/10.5070/R72145860

Book Chapters:

Martin, Jeffrey T. and A.D. Hoffman. 2023. “Staying Cool in a Hot Spot: Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics in Police Ethnography.” In Routledge Handbook of Police Ethnography, edited by Jenny Fleming and Sarah Charman. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-International-Handbook-of-Police-Ethnography/Fleming-Charman/p/book/9780367539399

Public Engagement Writing:

Hoffman, A.D., 2026. “Neurodiversity and Writing.” UIUC Writers Workshop, Writing Processes Resources. https://writersworkshop.illinois.edu/resources-2/writer-resources/writing-processes/neurodiversity-and-writing/

Hoffman, A.D. 2025. “Finding Sanctuary: Approaches to Multispecies Community and Justice,” HRI Inquiry, January 14. https://publish.illinois.edu/inquiryblog/2025/01/14/hoffman/

Hoffman, A.D., 2024. “Building Mutual Trust: One Caretaker’s Personal Journey.” The Howling Reporter, 46-48. https://q3p3v5u8.delivery.rocketcdn.me/wp-content/uploads/THR-2024-WEB.pdf

Hoffman, A.D. 2021. “Automating the Beast: Modern Police Power and the (Digi)Dog,” Platypus: The CASTAC Blog, December 9. https://blog.castac.org/2021/12/automating-the-beast-modern-police-power-and-the-digidog/

Hoffman, A.D. 2021. “Sanctuary is Not a Place,” Kritik: Fieldnotes from the Present, March 16. https://unitforcriticism.wordpress.com/2021/03/16/field-notes-from-the-present-blog-series-by-austin-d-hoffman-anthropology/

Hoffman, A.D. 2018. “Wolves in the Wild” Mission:Wolf. https://missionwolf.org/wild-wolves/

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