My research focuses on issues of gender equality and social inclusion within rural and agricultural development in East and Southern Africa, drawing on approaches from feminist political ecology, critical development studies, feminist science and technology studies, critical geography, and sociology.
Currently I am a member of two research projects: Goat Power and Include2Restore.
Goat Power
Goat Power investigates whether intensified goat production interventions in Zambia can have a positive, transformative effect on women’s empowerment. Goat production is receiving increased attention as a potentially more climate-resilient agricultural livelihood; it remains unknown how this shift will impact the empowerment of women farmers in Zambia. To explore this question, we are implementing the Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index across climatologically diverse regions of Zambia, complemented by qualitative data collection aiming to capture aspects of empowerment missed by the quantitative index and to assess the validity of the standardized index in this particular context. The Women’s Empowerment in Livestock Index (WELI) is a variation of the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI), which has gained widespread use in the past 12 years since its debut. We will contextualize our findings from the WELI in Zambia within the broader landscape of WEAI research and provide assessments of the WEAI’s successes and shortcomings and recommendations for future research women’s empowerment in livestock and agriculture. This project partners closely with researchers in veterinary medicine studying infectious diseases in goats in Zambia. Goat Power is funded by the Swedish Research Council, Project ID 2023-06049_VR.
Include2Restore
Include2Restore is part of the Triple L (Land, Livestock, Livelihoods) research initiative and collaborates with the Restore4More project, which is an offshoot of Drylands Transform.
Include2Restore builds upon the successes of these preceding projects, with a particular focus on Restore4More’s rangeland restoration conducted via “Livestock Cafes”: knowledge-sharing hubs with experimental plots and demonstrations of innovative rangeland restoration and water management practices in the Karamoja border region of Kenya and Uganda. Aiming to contribute more social science perspectives to these existing collaborations and networks, Include2Restore’s interdisciplinary research team investigates how the restoration achieved by Restore4More can become socially and economically sustainable as well, especially in relation to gender equality and social inclusion.
The project’s three main research questions are: 1) What rangeland management and restoration practices are needed to safeguard restoration outcomes long-term? How is local land and grazing management organized and what is needed to support long-term rangeland restoration? 2) Can financial returns be realized by pastoralists engaged in restoration? For example, could innovative livestock and fodder value-chains or fodder refinement and commercialization be an alternative? Is carbon market integration an option? 3) Is it possible to build peace, security, and social stability through gender-transformative collaboration around the above questions concerning sustainable rangeland restoration and management?
Include2Restore is funded by IDRC and the Gates Foundation.
Aside from my work on these projects, my wider research interests also include:
– Understanding sustainable food systems and rural out-migration/return through the lenses of social reproduction and reproductive justice
– Relationships between gender inequalities, imperialism, and settler colonialism, and opportunities for strengthening transnational feminist solidarity
– One Health and disability studies approaches for understanding transmission of zoonotic infectious diseases, especially related to livestock production, sociocultural perceptions of disease mitigation measures, and gendered impacts of infectious disease outbreaks
– Queer rural livelihoods, rural queer activism, transnational queer solidarity, and bringing queer perspectives to gender-transformative approaches
– Ethics of generative AI (large language models), especially in terms of digital colonialism, gender biases, technolibertarian threats to democracy, tech land grabs, and feminist science and technology studies
– Understanding the role of women’s empowerment in international development projects addressing nutrition and the developmental origins of health and disease
– Improving methods of measuring women’s empowerment in the monitoring and evaluation of agricultural development projects
– The role of masculinities in shaping social norms and reducing gender inequalities
– Ethics of international development and methods of decolonising development research and projects
PhD, Development Studies. University of Greenwich (Natural Resources Institute), UK. 2022.
MS, International Agricultural Development. University of California-Davis, USA. 2015.
BA, Chinese. Grinnell College, USA. 2011.