Colfer got her PhD at UW in Cultural Anthropology in 1974, with a specialization in cognitive anthropology, based on a study in a BIA residential school in Oregon.  She later returned to school at the University of Hawaii to get an MPH in International Health.  She has consistently worked in interdisciplinary and international contexts, including with practitioners and researchers in education, health, engineering, agriculture, ecology, and forestry.  She is currently semi-retired (affiliated loosely with the Center for International Forestry Research in Bogor, Indonesia as a ‘Senior Associate’; and with the Southeast Asia Program at Cornell University as a ‘Visiting Scholar’), continuing to write and publish anthropological research with an emphasis at the moment on masculinity studies.  At CIFOR (since 1994), she studied criteria and indicators for sustainable forest management, devolution of forest management, adaptive collaborative management of forests, health and forests,  landscapes, and gender.