Retired, not currently accepting graduate students

1993-96. NIH Post-doctoral Fellow. University of Kentucky.
1992. Ph.D., Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo.
1989, M.A., Anthropology, State University of New York at Buffalo.
1986, B.A., Anthropology, The Ohio State University.

Areas of Specialization:

• Nutrition-security and food security: political economy of food and nutrition; livelihood and food security; poverty, gender and ethnicity in food and nutrition; international nutrition and health.
• Child growth and population well-being: Polical-economy of child growth; community, household and individual health and well-being; the politics of health and healthcare.
• Human adaptation and adaptability: biocultural approaches to human adaptation and human adaptability; mixed methods.

Courses Taught

• ANT 230 Introduction to Biological Anthropology
• ANT 333 Contemporary Human Variation
• ANT 303 Topics in Food and Nutrition: Food Politics
• ANT 440 Anthropological Perspectives on Child Growth and Development
• ANT 603 Human Biology in Context of Sociocultural Change
• ANT 608 Anthropology of Food and Nutrition
• ANT 774 Malnutrition and Food Security in a Changing World

          My current research focuses on the relationship between livelihood strategies and nutrition security in a rural community in Zambia, Africa. This research is part of a long-term research endeavor aimed at making more porous the traditional sub-disciplinary boundaries between biological and cultural anthropology to allow a critical re-envisioning of the human environment in adaptability research. To do this, I work at the nexus of human adaptability, political economy, and political ecology theories to gain a greater understanding of the consequences for human well-being of the complex dialectic among humans and their natural and social environments. In other words, I seek to understand the multiple and interactive factors that lead to the plurality of human biologies that make up the contemporary human condition particularly as evidenced in child growth and nutritional status.

            Since I joined the Gwembe Tonga Research Project in 2004, colleague, Lisa Cliggett and I, have worked in a community in Chikanta Territory, focusing on 42 small-farmer households within the community. With the assistance of funding from NSF and the College of Arts and Sciences, University of Kentucky, we are investigating the relationship between anthropometric outcomes and complex and varied livelihood strategies in three ecologically distinct neighborhoods. Our fieldwork is complete and we are currently in the analysis stage.

            In future research, Dr. Cliggett and I plan to investigate the relationship between food insecurity and mental health outcomes in Zambia and South Africa. Our planned research is linked to a larger project, the Global Food Security and Mental Health Project, which was formulated with the assistance of 20 researchers at an NSF funded workshop facilitated by myself, Lisa Cliggett, Craig Hadley (Emory), David Himmelgreen (U. So. Florida) and Alyson Young (U Florida). The outcome of the workshop will be a conceptual model and multi-method research protocol that will be shared and utilized by researchers in fieldsites around the world.

 Select Grants:

• 2010, National Science Foundation, Workshop on Food Insecurity and Mental Health, PI, with Lisa Cliggett and Craig Hadley, co-PIs. $29, 676.
• 2010, National Science Foundation, Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, Jennifer Williams, Co-PI. $17,259.
• 2007, National Science Foundation, REG Supplement Award, $5000.
• 2005, National Science Foundation, Senior Investigator Award, PI with Lisa Cliggett, co-PI. $100, 375.
• 1993, National Institutes of Health, Post-doctoral research and training award, $81,200.