The Team
Susanne Jaspars is the Principle Investigator of the project. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the SOAS Food Studies Centre. Susanne researches the political dynamics of food in situations of conflict, famine, and humanitarian crisis. Ongoing interests include: regimes of food practices and power relations, social approaches to nutrition and accountability for mass starvation, European migration and asylum policies and their effects. She has worked mostly in the Horn of Africa, often Sudan.
Tamer Abd Elkreem is a Co-Investigator/Sudan lead researcher of the project. He is a lecturer at the department of Sociology and Social Anthropology and the Deputy Director of Peace Research, University of Khartoum. His research interest focuses on power relations of development, Anthropology of post-colonial state, anthropology of mega developmental projects and critical analysis of its discourses and practices in Sudan.
C. Sathyamala is a Co-Principal Investigator and the lead India researcher of the project. She is a public health physician and an epidemiologist with a PhD in Development Studies. Currently, she is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute for Human development (IHD), New Delhi and the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), The Hague. Her areas of interest include food politics, political economy of health, reproductive rights, environmental justice and medical ethics.
Iris Lim is the UK-lead researcher for the project. As a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Food Studies in the SOAS Department of Anthropology and Sociology, her expertise lies in digital public service delivery, digital inclusion, migration, citizenship and integration, and critical user-experience (UX) research.
Somjita Laha is the Senior Researcher for India in the project. She is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi and is trained in Heterodox Economics, and Development Policy and Management. She is interested in interdisciplinary research on political economy of labour, global value chains, environmental sustainability and gender in development. She has been an independent consultant for International Centre for Research on Women (ICRW), India and International Labour Organization (ILO), India and Geneva.
Yasmin Houamed is the Research Assistant for the UK case study of the project. She received her MA in Anthropology of Food at SOAS, University of London and her BA in Political Science from Stanford University. Her research has previously focused on food systems and commodification in Tunisia.