Food, Risk, and the Field: Perspectives on Health and Livelihoods Across Africa [NEW DATE!]

How do food systems shape livelihoods, human health, and relationships with the environment? Drawing on ethnographic and mixed-methods research in Madagascar and Nigeria, this talk examines how food insecurity, economic pressures, and zoonotic disease risks intersect in everyday life. Three studies explore the complex relationships between wild food systems and household food security, the unequal distribution of economic benefits and occupational risks within wild meat economies, and the social and structural conditions shaping human-rodent interactions. We will focus on how anthropological fieldwork can illuminate relationships often overlooked by approaches focused on isolated health outcomes. This work also invites critical reflection on the practice of anthropology itself, drawing on NSF-funded research to consider how we can make fieldwork safer, more equitable, and more ethical for future generations of researchers and their collaborators.

Dr. Katharine Thompson is a medical and environmental anthropologist whose research examines the intersections of food systems, livelihoods, human health, and environmental change across sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing on fieldwork in Madagascar, Nigeria, and Tanzania, she uses ethnographic and participatory methods to investigate food insecurity, zoonotic disease risk, and the social conditions shaping human-environment relationships. Her NSF-funded research also examines the epidemiology of occupational risk in scientific fieldwork, with an emphasis on improving safety, ethics, and research practices for future generations of field scientists.

*This event has been rescheduled from November 10