Hello! I’m an Assistant Professor in Development Studies and a fellow of Murray Edwards College at the University of Cambridge. As an anthropologist, I use ethnographic methods to study the interplay of agriculture, politics, and development.
I’ve spent close to a decade researching a complex and contested global effort to introduce genetically modified crops to Ghana. I study “up, down, and sideways,” meaning I am interested in how actors and power across scale, from multinational corporations to Ghanaian farmers, shape foodways. My book on this research – We are not starving: The Struggle for Food Sovereignty in Ghana – was recently published by Michigan State University Press.
To date, my research has been funded by the Fulbright-Hays Program, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and the British Academy, and has been featured in African Affairs; Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment; Development & Change; The Nation; Nature Bioengineering; Foreign Policy in Focus; and beyond. A full list of my publications can be found here.
Prior to moving to Cambridge, I taught in the Global Poverty and Practice program at the University of California-Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow first in the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University, and later in the Department of International Studies at Dalhousie University. I hold a PhD and MA in Anthropology from American University, and a BA in International Studies from the University of California-San Diego.
Joeva Sean Rock 