Doctoral Dissertation Research: Famine Science

This doctoral dissertation project investigates and collates the interactions of scientific disciplines of nutrition, demography, and epidemiology. It examines how scientific experts deploy new technologies and standards to measure population and disease to control famines, as well as lay knowledge about the effects of the famine on the body. This project offers insights into how scientific knowledge of disease and food changes and is created during a famine. This project applies mixed methods to epidemiological data sets, famine camp records, medical journals, administrative reports, scientific surveys and conference proceedings. The role of diverse actors and organizations, ranging from decision makers, nutrition scientists, surveyors, medical professionals, missionaries, and philanthropies and civic voluntary societies will be examined. Through this analysis, this project traces the ways scientific knowledge conceptualizes famines and its impact on communities and regions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.