Dr Sabine Parrish

Biography

I am an anthropologist of food, with a particular research interest in the cultures and political economy of coffee consumption and the environmental futures of coffee production. My area of regional specialism is Brazil. I have conducted ethnographic fieldwork related to cultures of food and nutrition in Brazil, the United States, and the United Kingdom. 

Prior to joining the University of Aberdeen, I was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London, and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Oxford. I have been a Visiting Lecturer at Stanford University and the University of Gastronomic Sciences and I am an affiliate of the Unit for Biocultural Variation and Obesity at the University of Oxford.

External Memberships

European Association of Social Anthropologists - Network co-convenor: Anthropology of Food

Research Overview

My research interests include: dietary inequalities and health; tropical agriculture (particularly coffee); agricultural and service labour; climate change; consumption; coloniality and colonialism; competition; moral economies; translation.

Current Research

I am currently PI on the project Cross-Cultural Taste: Exploring Sensory Language Disparities in Coffee Evaluation for the Global Market. 

This is a collaborative project between the University of Aberdeen and the Faculty of Food Engineering at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil, where the Brazilian side of the research is led by Prof Jorge Behrens.

Past Research

Some of the research projects I have been involved in are: 

Family Food Experience Study - London (2021-2024)

Pregnancy-Related Interventions in Mothers at Risk for Gestational Diabetes (2020-2023)

Identifying Changes in Household Eating and Physical Activity During the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020-2021)

Understanding Obesity and Eating Disorders through the Material Culture of the Home (2019-2020)

Coffee Consumption in Hybrid Production-Consumption Economies (2016-2021)