Patrick Farris

I'm from Bladen County, North Carolina, and am an alumnus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from which I graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Anthropology in 1989. After college I lived in the Middle East and Central Asia conducting ethnographic research. I studied Arabic at Kuwait University and Uzbek at Tashkent State University before taking my master's degree in Anthropology and Central Eurasian Studies at Indiana University. I taught at the high school level in Moore County in North Carolina and in Warren County and Winchester City in Virginia. As an anthropologist I have been part of the faculties of Indiana University-Purdue University, Shepherd University, Bridgewater College, Lord Fairfax Community College and Shenandoah University. I was the Executive Director of the Warren Heritage Society in Front Royal, Virginia from 2004 to 2017, during which time I served on several boards and commissions involved in the development of historical resources and tourism in the Shenandoah Valley. In the City of Winchester I chaired both the Board of Architectural Review and the Tree Commission, and in Middletown, Virginia chaired the Cedar Creek and Belle Grove National Historical Park Federal Advisory Commission, to which I was appointed by the US Department of the Interior. I received appointments by the State Legislature of Virginia to the Virginia Bicentennial of the War of 1812 Citizens Advisory Committee and to the Special Subcommittee for the 50th Anniversary of Public School Closings in Virginia, an arm of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Commission. My most recent ethnographic research has been in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle, and in Lebanon. In 2017 I joined Booz Allen Hamilton. My wife Krista have three boys, Alexander, Sebastian and Langston, all raised on Loudoun Street in the City of Winchester’s Historic District..