Jennifer Johnson

Jennifer Lee Johnson

PhD Student, School of Natural Resources and Environment
International Institute Individual Fellowship

"My research analyzes historical and present-day ecological and social transformations in Lake Victoria, Africa’s most productive fishery. I hope my work will help practitioners, politicians, and scholars improve how resource extraction functions."

In the summers of 2007 and 2008, Jennifer Johnson conducted her master’s and preliminary doctoral research focused on the local and global commodity chains for illegal and legal Nile perch near Lake Victoria in East Africa. She employed interdisciplinary methodologies from anthropology, political ecology, and fisheries science to analyze social adaptations to ecological change in the Lake Victoria Basin.

She conducted over 40 semi-structured interviews, participant observation and archival research in the basin as well as 130 household surveys as part of a larger research project. She also published several news features in the Ugandan Daily Monitor on the human dimensions of the fisheries’ collapse. Her field experiences confirmed her desire to pursue her doctoral degree and a research-focused career.

 

Additional funding for Jennifer’s work was also provided by the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies’ Africa Initiative Grant, Doris Duke Conservation Foundation, Rackham Graduate School, and School of Natural Resources and Environment.