Ellen Messer

I am an anthropologist dedicated to (rooting out) hunger and (promoting) human rights. When training in ecological anthropology at the University of Michigan in the 1970s, I carried out ethnobotanical fieldwork in Mexico, an experience that has instilled a lifelong interest in comparative analysis of methods of transforming food and medical systems -- especially the roles women play in these transformations and the impact it has on their lives. After teaching anthropology at Yale University and Wheaton, I moved on to the multi-disciplinary World Hunger Program at Brown University, where we operated simultaneously as an academic think-tank, NGO, and science policy center, facilitating communications among academic researchers, policy makers, and field practitioners. After Brown terminated the WHP, I moved to the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, my present location. My current research explores what happened to the U.S. anti-hunger movement of the 1970s and 1980s, and the ways "hunger" activities intersect with the institutions and values of environmental science and policy. Three related projects explore policies to reduce war-related hunger, possible ways to turn positive religious energies toward the elimination of hunger, and innovative scenarios using water for food security. I also enjoy hiking and birdwatching, cooking and culinary history, biblical exegesis and religious dialogue, and occasionally write poetry.

 

Expertise

Anthropology, specifically: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Human Right to Food; Biocultural Determinants of Food and Nutrition Intake; Sustainable Food Systems (with special emphasis on the roles of NGOs); Impacts of Agrobiotechnology on Hunger; and Cultural History of Nutrition, Agriculture, and Food Science