2023 Christine Wilson Graduate Award Winner!

Amanda Kaminsky

SAFN is pleased to announce that Amanda Kaminsky is the winner of the 2023 Christine Wilson Graduate paper award! Kaminsky, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, won with her paper entitled “Artisanal Slaughter: The Challenges of Goat Meat in Vermont.”

Amanda Kaminsky pivoted during the pandemic and adjusted her fieldsite from Nairobi to Vermont. She submitted and won the Christine Wilson Graduate Award this year for the research she carried out in Vermont with people who raise and eat goat meat. Specifically, she examined the artisanal production system, contexualizing her results in the global consumption of goat meat, in the wider American meat system – mostly CAFO operations, and in the context of food culture in Vermont, finding that the limited demand is driven by institutional economic factors and cultural factors related to the way goat meat is coded as “other” in Vermont. The reviewers found that the writing was original, organized, well argued, and supported by strong evidence. Amanda Kaminsky’s dissertation research examines food consumption and racial tensions in Nairobi, Kenya, within the context of China-Africa relations, particularly focusing on how Chinese food consumption patterns both fuel and reflect larger issues of diplomacy and identity.