Marisa Wilson

I am an anthropologist and senior lecturer in critical human geography at the University of Edinburgh. Most of my research centres on alternatives to the corporate food regime in the Caribbean. I am increasingly interested in using sensory and digital methods to tell complex and difficult stories of transnational food commodities such as sugar. 

Current research 

I am principal investigator on an AHRC project entitled 'Living Histories of Sugar in the West Indies and Scotland' (Jan 2021-Dec 2022), which uses song and story archives, co-creative methods and immersive performance to re-work existing narratives about sugar. I am concluding a project entitled Visualising Sugaropolis (BA/Leverhulme), which used games, story mapping, museum objects and sensory oral histories to tell sugar stories, from the perspectives of Greenlockians. We are currently inviting primary and secondary schools in the Inverclyde area to participate in the online exhibition (see: https://www.remembering-sugaropolis.org/). 

Next steps 

I have studied Cuba's national food sovereignty project and I am currently asking questions regarding who is included, who is excluded, and whether and how Cuba's so-called 'alternative food network' is hindered by long-term racial inequalities in access to land. I am developing a project with academics and farmers from Jamaica and the State of the African Diaspora that seeks to develop digital tools (e.g. story maps) to increase recognition of and respect for Afrodescendant seed savers in Jamaica who have maintained agrobiodiversity since the time of slavery.  

Food-related inequalities and agrarian change; qualitative approaches to nutrition transition and food systems; Latin America and the Caribbean; transnational sugar histories; moral economies and moral economy research; politics of scale; mainstream and alternative value systems

Geography of Social Justice Research Group, Cultural and Historical Geography Research Group, Sustainable Rural and Agricultural Development Research Group (University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica, member of the steering group), Centre for Contemporary Latin American Studies

Marisa Wilson’s work focuses on historical, political and cultural economies of agri-food networks, with a focus on Cuba, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and trans-Atlantic sugar networks linking the West Indies and Scotland. She uses ethnographic, oral history and visual/digital methods to increase understandings of food production and consumption in (post)colonial contexts. Her work on Caribbean food economies illustrates cultural, historical and political economic reasons behind food preferences, agricultural land use and, more recently, the outcomes of nutrition and other interventions aimed at re-localising food. She is currently exploring the use of digital methods such as story maps to create people-led understandings and alternatives to corporate food networks.

Research in a nutshell video: 

https://media.ed.ac.uk/media/Marisa+Wilson+Research+in+a+Nutshell/1_n780t93y