Jenny Diggins
Research & Evaluation Manager

Research

My doctoral fieldwork was based in Tissana: a vibrant, and not entirely harmonious, multi-ethnic fishing town in Southern Sierra Leone. It tells the story of the successive waves of young migrants who, for several decades, have been arriving on the coast from rural areas seeking an alternative to the indentured labour conditions of a farming economy still shaped by the legacy of domestic slavery. Set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing post-war economy, and in an ecological context in which fish stocks are in treacherous decline, I explore the intersection between people’s everyday struggles for economic survival and their taken-for-granted knowledge of the substance of the world within which those fragile livelihoods play out.

Since completing my thesis earlier this year, I have been working as a research consultant in Sierra Leone, looking at attempts by male activist organisations to molibise against gender based violence.  I am currently working on a paper exploring the gendered dimensions of the current Ebola crisis. 

I have an emerging resrach interest in the political economy of infant and maternal health.

KEYWORDS:

Fishing, West Africa, Economic Anthropology, Kinship and Relatedness, Trust, Criminality, Materiality, Maternal Health.