Joseph J. Hobbs is professor emeritus of geography at the University of Missouri-Columbia and a Middle East specialist with decades of field research on Bedouin peoples and desert biogeographies in Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula. Growing up in Saudi Arabia sparked his interest in the region. He served as team leader of the Bedouin Support Program, identifying opportunities and benefits for local people in the St. Katherine Natural Protectorate project in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, and sought Bedouin input for a project to reintroduce leopards to protected areas in northwestern Arabia. While working for the Emirates Foundation, he led a team developing a national strategic plan for managing the environments of the United Arab Emirates. Dr. Hobbs’ research interests include indigenous peoples’ engagement in protected areas, human uses of caves worldwide, Arctic climate change, sacred places and the indigenous Cao Dai religion of Vietnam. He is the author of "Bedouin Life in the Egyptian Wilderness" and "Mount Sinai" (University of Texas Press), co-author of "The Birds of Egypt" (Oxford University Press) and co-editor and author of "Dangerous Harvest: Drug Plants and the Transformation of Indigenous Landscapes" (Oxford). A recipient of the University of Missouri’s highest teaching award, the Kemper Fellowship, Dr. Hobbs taught graduate and undergraduate courses in world regional geography, environmental geography, Middle East geography, cave geography, global current events, the geographies of drugs and terrorism, geopolitics and a field course on ancient Maya uses of caves in Belize. He has traveled to more than 100 countries and led adventure travel tours from 1984–1999 to remote regions across the globe, including the High Arctic and the North Pole. Dr. Hobbs earned his BA from UC Santa Cruz in 1978 and his MA and Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980 and 1986. He and his wife Cindy live in Missouri.
