Joshua Ramisch

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Joshua Ramisch is a Full Professor at the School of International Development and Global Studies, where he teaches courses on food security, sub-Saharan Africa, sustainability, and research methods. He holds a Ph.D. in International Development Studies from the University of East Anglia in Norwich and a B.Sc. in International Development Studies (Co-operative Programme) from the University of Toronto. He joined the University of Ottawa in 2006, having served prior to this (2000-2006) as the Social Science Officer of the Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility Institute, based in Nairobi. He has over 20 years' experience working in Kenya but also has experience in East, West & Central Africa, Central America, Colombia, and Indonesia. His research and teaching are informed by human ecology, combining geography, anthropology, and participatory approaches to work critically at the intersection of social and environmental sciences. He has published extensively on soil fertility management, agrarian change, indigenous ecological knowledge, and how to improve participatory rural development projects. Recently completed research has addressed rural Kenyans' perceptions of climate change, the role of cellphones in shaping rural-urban migration and rural development, and the political ecology of land-use change in western Kenya from the 1880s until the present.

His research and teaching interests address the ways in which marginalized and disenfranchised people experience and respond to social and environmental changes. He has over 20 years of experience working with smallholder farmers and rural communities primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, with a special focus on Kenya. 

He generally looks for students with a strong, critically-oriented social scientific background, an interest (or previous experience) in the Global South more generally and  desire to apply rigorous analysis (qualitative, participatory, or quantitative) to challenge current thinking about “development” in the Global South.

1. Impacts of and responses to neoliberal / market-based approaches to rural development in Africa (e.g. the growth of supermarkets; “fair” trade or other certification systems; “payment for ecosystem services”)

2. Local experiences of and responses to environmental change in the Global South (e.g. climate variability, forest or agrarian transitions, changing biodiversity)

3. The political ecology of natural resource management challenges (e.g. to go beyond conventional understandings of the “drivers” of land-use change or the standard narratives of “degradation”)

4. The “social lives” of material goods or commodities (e.g. of domesticated plants or animals; of information/communication technologies; of “value chains” for minerals or foods)

5. The discursive construction of “scarcity” or “insecurity” in international development policy as those terms relate to food, natural resources, or livelihoods “in crisis”.