Josh sitting near a pond on Kenya-Uganda border

Welcome – Bienvenue

I am a Full Professor at the University of Ottawa’s School of International Development and Global Studies.

  • RESEARCH: I work on the social dimensions of environmental problems, such as local perceptions of climate change, food (in)security, local ecological knowledge of soils, and how mobility (e.g. through cellphones and motorcycles) is reshaping rural development.
    (Explore the research and writing tabs, or anything in the tag cloud)
  • GRADUATE SUPERVISION: (click the student menu to explore current and past student projects )
  • TEACHING (graduate and undergraduate): Food security, Livelihoods & sustainability, Research Methods, Development issues in Africa, Field Research in Kenya

I have over 25 years of experience living and working in Africa (particularly Kenya and Mali), but have worked on global agricultural projects that included Latin America and Asia.

I have also worked with the Nairobi-headquartered Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute (TSBF) of the Centro Internacional d’Agricultura Tropical (CIAT), and the Land Tenure Centre (LTC) of the University of Wisconsin -Madison.

Download my full academic CV (May 2021 version)

KEY PUBLICATIONS:
2019 presentation “We make others wait now”: Youth, motorcycles, and masculinities on the road to development in Kenya (for the African Studies Association of Africa)
2018 Experimental Agriculture paper (with João V. Silva) about improving the social relevance of “yield gap” analyses (read more here).
2016 Agriculture & Human Values paper about cellphones, rural-urban migration, and agrarian change in western Kenya (read more here)
2014 Geoforum paper about farmers and scientists learning from each other (read more here).
2014 Book chapter: “We won’t farm like our fathers”: Cellphones, multilocational livelihoods, and the challenge of rural development in Kenya (Routledge, 2014). (read more here)

Beyond the Biophysical

Buy / Download my 2010 book: Beyond the Biophysical: Knowledge, Culture, and Politics in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management from the Springer site.

Knowledge – Food – Development