Degrees prior to starting this degree program:

BA, Anthropology and English Writing, University of Pittsburgh, 2012
LLM, International Economic Law, SOAS University of London, 2015
JD, Columbia Law School, 2016

Areas of Interest:

Anthropology of Food, Anthropology and Business, Anthropology of Finance, Anthropology and Industry, Anthropology of Development, Environmental Anthropology, Political and Legal Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies

Field Research Plans/History:

Aderayo Sanusi is a PhD candidate in Anthropology. She was born in Lagos, Nigeria and lived there for ten years before immigrating to the United States. 

Her dissertation “Feeding the Nation: Cassava and the Struggle for Food Self-Sufficiency in Nigeria” explores how Nigerians attempt to achieve a self-reliant food system with mass production of cassava and cassava products. Since freed Afro-Brazilian women returned to Lagos in the 1800s and shared knowledge of safe processing techniques with indigenes, Nigerians have cultivated, processed, marketed and traded cassava, a food and cash crop, for sustenance and income. Cassava products have rapidly become national food staple items even as Nigeria’s increasing import dependency threatens urban food security. Drawing from ethnographic research in southwest Nigeria and archival material on Nigeria’s research institutes, Sanusi demonstrates how Nigerians express their ideal of food self-sufficiency with protectionist food policies, environmentally conscious farming, scientific practices, processing technologies, finance, and other business strategies that harness the commercial and nutritional value of cassava.

Publications:

Sanusi, Aderayo. 2021. “Patent Law-Making in Context and the Value of Socio-Legal Approaches to Studying Intellectual Property in Global South Countries.” AfronomicsLaw.

Sanusi, Aderayo. 2020. “Book Review: What do Science, Technology, and Innovation Mean from Africa?” Perspectives.

Sanusi, Aderayo. 2015. "Occupational Health and Safety in Nigeria: The Status Quo." Employment & Industrial Relations Law Newsletter of the International Bar Association Legal Practice Division 25(2):24.