Lisa Cliggett University of Kentucky

Lisa Cliggett is Professor and Chair of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. Cliggett received her BA in Anthropology from Connecticut College and her MA/PhD from Indiana University. Prior to coming to the University of Kentucky, she held a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Population Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a cultural anthropologist with expertise in Economic and Environmental anthropology, as well as migration, development and kinship and has carried out economic and ecological research in Zambia since 1992, working with Gwembe Tonga people who were displaced from the Zambezi river by the building of Kariba Dam in 1958, and their descendants. Cliggett currently heads this longitudinal project (Gwembe Tonga Research Project - GTRP), started by anthropologists Elizabeth Colson and Thayer Scudder in 1956. Cliggett’s recent research concerns the economic, ecological and socio-political dynamics of new road development in the Gwembe Valley (NSF-BCS-1736413). Earlier work examined migration, the politics of land access and land cover change, and livelihood diversification among migrants from the Gwembe Valley, who pioneered areas in conservation buffer zones in Central Zambia (NSF-BCS-0236933; NSF-BCS-0518492). This project included a collaborative study (with D. Crooks) of food security and nutrition in the context of migration (NSF-BCS-0517878). Her other work considers livelihood diversification, household economies, and support systems for the elderly.  One outgrowth of the longitudinal research with the GTRP is her work on digital data preservation and access (NSF-BCS-1157418; NSF-BCS-1159109). Her published work includes the monograph “Grains from Grass: Aging, gender and famine in Africa,” “Economies and Cultures” co-authored with Richard Wilk, a co-edited volume (with V. Bond and B. Siamwiza) of Zambian and Zimbabwean scholars’ research: “Tonga Timeline: Appraising 60 years of multidisciplinary research in Zambia and Zimbabwe,” the co-edited (with C. Pool) volume “Economies and the Transformation of Landscape,” and articles and book chapters in disciplinary, topical and area studies journals and volumes.