Courtney Stafford-Walter

Dr Courtney Stafford-Walter is a Teaching Professor at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, affiliated with the Institute for Education, Community & Society (IECS). She holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of St Andrews (2015) and a BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Virginia (2009). Her research focuses on the intersection of education, development, and social change, particularly through ethnographically grounded studies of indigenous communities in Guyana and Latin America.

• Education: PhD (Social Anthropology, St Andrews), BA (Cultural Anthropology, Virginia)

Her research explores how ethnographic methods interrogate Western-centric development discourses and examine the impacts of schooling on indigenous youth, including themes like spirit possession, cultural dislocation, and power hierarchies. She co-founded the Center for Research and Collaboration of the Indigenous Americas (CRACIA) at the University of Maryland and is a member of the Centre for Amerindian, Caribbean, and Latin American Studies (CAS) at St Andrews.

She teaches courses on comparative education, qualitative methods, and the anthropology of education. Her recent work includes studies on climate change’s impact on indigenous education systems and intergenerational knowledge transmission in Guyana. Courtney actively participates in international conferences, organizing workshops on field research ethics and qualitative writing.

Advising focuses on decolonizing methodologies, indigenous knowledge systems, and ethnographic research practices. She collaborates with interdisciplinary teams to address education’s role in sustainable development goals (SDGs).