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  Ezra Zubrow has been elected a Fellow of the scholarly Society of Antiquaries of London, the world’s premier learned society for heritage. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE

By PATRICIA DONOVAN

Published: April 4, 2011

Ezra Zubrow, a UB archaeologist of international renown whose recent research has taken him from India to Finland, and from Northern Quebec and Egypt to Kamchatka, has been elected a Fellow of the scholarly Society of Antiquaries of London, the world’s premier learned society for heritage.

This distinguished international association was founded in 1707—although its roots extend into the 16th century—to encourage, advance and further the study and knowledge of the antiquities and history of Britain and countries abroad. Fellows, elected by existing members of the society in recognition of their significant achievement in the heritage field, are entitled to use the initials FSA after their names.

Fellows include directors of national museums and galleries, heads of university departments and directors of conservation charities, as well as well-known authors, journalists and broadcasters, bishops, peers and members of parliament, and members of other professions, all distinguished by their expertise in various aspects of heritage studies. Stephen Dyson, Park Professor of Classics at UB, was elected a fellow in 2009.

Zubrow is a professor in the departments of anthropology and geography in the College of Arts and Sciences, and senior research scientist at the National Center for Geographic Information Analysis Laboratory, which he helped to found. He also is an adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Toronto, an honorary fellow in the Department of Archaeology at Cambridge University and was the Yip Fellow in 2008 and 2010 at Magdalene College, Cambridge.

His work reflects a diverse set of academic interests—arctic archaeology and anthropology, climate change, human ecology and demography—and a deep interest in such social issues as heritage, disability and literacy, Nordic archaeology, ecology, simulation models and global information systems.

Since 2004, he has worked intensively with teams of U.S., Finnish, Canadian and Russian scientists in the Arctic regions of St. James Bay, Quebec; Yli-ii, Finland; and Kamchatka, Siberia, to understand how humans living 4,000 to 6,000 years ago reacted to climate changes.

This study, which has collected a vast array of archaeological and paleoenvironmental data, began with the Social Change and the Environment in Nordic Prehistory Project, a major international research study by scientists from the U.S., Canada and Europe of prehistoric sites in Northern Quebec and Finland.

Early phases of the study were headed by Zubrow, along with scientists at McGill University in Montreal and Finland’s Oulu University.

A later phase of the study, called the International Circumpolar Archaeological Project, was funded by the National Science Foundation’s Arctic Social Sciences Program of the Office of Polar Programs. Headed by Zubrow, it focused on a third sub-arctic region: Siberia’s remote Kamchatka peninsula, a rough and extremely volcanic wilderness region the size of California.

In addition to his academic work, Zubrow is a longtime union activist. He is the immediate past president of the UB’s Buffalo Center Chapter of United University Professions, the SUNY faculty/professional staff union, and currently serves as its vice president for academics.

Last month, he was elected president of the UB Faculty Senate, the elected, official representative body of the voting faculty at the university.