A Canada Research Chair in Public Policy in Criminal Justice, Dawson joined the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at the University of Guelph in 2003. Her undergraduate degree is in Sociology and Law & Society from York University and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology are from the...
Elizabeth Finnis
I completed my PhD in Anthropology at McMaster University in 2006, and then undertook a SSHRC-funded post-doctoral fellowship at the Department of Anthropology and the Centre for Society, Technology, and Development at McGill University.
My research addresses issues of political ecology of food, diet, and agricultural transitions; food transitions and food sovereignty; environment-economic tensions that emerge in the context of smallholder farmer households; and development and identity. Geographically, I am interested in South Asia (India & Nepal) and South America (Paraguay). Some of my previous research has examined health care access and experience of lesbians and gay men living in Northern Ontario.
Some of my current research involves a project looking at rural livelihoods, social/physical environmental change, agricultural transitions and food practices among smallholder families in a community in rural Paraguay. This project is being undertaken with 3 agronomy collaborators at the Universidad Nacional de Asuncion (Paraguay).
My teaching interests include: qualitative research methods, anthropological perspectives on health and the body, emerging issues in anthropological theory, and topics relating to agriculture, food, environment, and development.
Some current/past graduate student research topics include: traditional medicine in urban Paraguay, health and health care in rural Paraguay, urban food access in Paraguay, and food security/insecurity among international students.
Finnis, E., Clotilde Benitez, Estela Fatima Candia Romero and Maria Jose Aparicio Meza. 2012. Changes to Agricultural Decision-making and Food Procurement in Rural Paraguay. Latin American Research Review 47(2):180-190.
Finnis, E (ed). 2012. Reimagining Marginalized Foods: Global Processes, Local Places. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Finnis, E. 2010. "Every place has roads in the plains": Public spaces and private markets in arguments for development and inclusion in South India. Anthropologica 52(1):141-153.
Moffat, T. & E. Finnis. 2010. Dietary Diversity, Dietary Transitions, and Childhood Nutrition in Nepal: Questions of Methodology and Practice. In Human Diet and Nutrition in Biocultural Perspective: Past Meets Present. Moffat, Tina and Tracy Prowse, eds. New York: Berghahn Books, pp 133-151.
Finnis, E. 2009. "Now it is an easy life": Women's accounts of millets, cassava, and labour requirements in South India. Culture and Agriculture 31(2):88-94.
Finnis, E. 2008. Economic Wealth, Food Wealth, and Millet Consumption: Shifting Notions of Food, Identity and Development. Food, Culture and Society 11(4):463-485.
Finnis, E. 2007. The political ecology of dietary transitions: Agricultural change, environment, and economics. Agriculture and Human Values 24:343-353.











