Dr. Maria Elisa Christie

Expertise: Gender, Agriculture, and Development; Qualitative Research Methods; Feminist Political Ecology; Cultural Ecology; Geography of Food, Cuisine, and Kitchenspace

Education: B.A., International Studies, History, and Romance Languages, University of Oregon, 1983; M.A., Spanish and Women’s Studies, University of Oregon, 1994; Ph.D., Geography, University of Texas at Austin, 2003.

Countries of work experience: Mali, Senegal, Guinea, Ghana, Zambia, Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Nepal, India, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Honduras, West Indies, Ecuador, Bolivia.

Dr. Maria Elisa Christie has more than 25 years of experience in international development. Throughout her career, she has worked with a variety of development, research, and non-governmental agencies around the developing world, along with local, state, and federal governments in the United States and Mexico. Christie has played a key role in launching new projects that support international collaboration. Christie’s research focuses on gender and agriculture, gendered spaces and everyday life in nature/society relations, participatory research methodologies, kitchens and gardens, and women’s reciprocity networks. She has published a book, Kitchenspace: Women, Fiestas, and Everyday Life in Central Mexico, with the University of Texas Press. More recently, she has published articles on gender and development in: Gender, Place, and Culture; the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography; Agriculture and Human Values; Development in Practice; GeoJournal; Gender, Technology and Development, Gender and Education; and the International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology. She has developed and facilitated workshops on gender and participatory research in the United States and in French-, Spanish-, and English-speaking countries.