Jennifer Lee Johnson
Jennifer’s work is motivated by her passion for equity, empowerment, and ecological sustainability in subsistence-based livelihoods, particularly in fishing-dependent communities in East Africa. Jennifer uses the methodological and conceptual tools from anthropology, ecology, history and science, technology and society studies to address the biophysical and socio-cultural-economic transformations in fishing communities, fisheries, and fisheries science and management in Lake Victoria and other African Great Lakes.
Jennifer grew up in suburban Ohio and developed her curiosity for aquatic social-ecological systems while spending her summers on Lake Erie. She attended the Colorado College, completing her economic honors thesis on the international political economy of African elephant conservation in Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania. Prior to beginning her graduate studies, Jennifer worked for the Marine Fish Conservation Network, the nation’s largest coalition dedicated to protecting, conserving, and restoring marine fish, in Washington, DC. Today, Jennifer continues her work on marine fishery management and sustainability through her sustainable seafood research for the Blue Ocean Institute.
At the University of Michigan’s School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE), Jennifer’s M.S. thesis used a commodity chain analysis of the Kenyan export-oriented Nile perch fishery and a discussion of resource violence to document the distribution of benefits from the fishery and to argue that the Nile perch trade and the Nile perch itself committed ecological and domestic violence in the Lake Victoria Basin. During the ’06-’07 academic year Jennifer also worked for the Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory, where she helped facilitate NOAA’s Regional Collaboration efforts in the Great Lakes region. Jennifer also represents SNRE on the steering committee of the UM’s African Development and Human Security Project and is an active member of the Development and Sustainable Livelihoods Group. |
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