About My Work
To me, agriculture is not just about growing food; it’s also about cultivating heritage and identity—remembering stories and people from the past, utilizing local knowledge about the land, and imagining and speculating about the future. At the heart of my work is this driving question: What are the relationships between the cultivation of food and the cultivation of identity?
As an anthropologist, I immerse myself in the communities I study to explore how food and agricultural practices reflect and shape sociopolitical dynamics and climate futures. My current research centers the Legend Coffee Project, which focuses on reviving Arabica typica coffee production on the French Caribbean island of Martinique. In my book project, Cultivating Time: Coffee, Heritage, and the Labor of Endurance, I examine a project to revive Martinique’s historic coffee industry to demonstrate how heritage becomes both promise and problem in efforts to materialize political and economic futures.
About Me
I am a Jamaican Canadian scholar and writer from Toronto, Canada. I hold a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University, a M.A. in Social Anthropology from York University, and an Honours B.Sc. with Distinction in Psychology and Equity Studies from the University of Toronto. Currently, I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities and Teaching Scholar in the Department of Anthropology.
My research has been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. I am the 2023 recipient of the Setha M. Low Engaged Anthropology Award from the American Anthropological Association for my work as creator and co-host to the Black feminist anthropology podcast Zora’s Daughters. In my free time, I enjoy dancing, travelling, and spending time with mini poodle, Avery.