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She works on issues of gender, human rights and development with a focus on colonial histories, gendered citizenship, and gender and sexuality rights in the Global South. Her recent monograph with James Currey (UK), ‘Reimagining the Gendered Nation: Human Rights and Citizenship in Post-colonial Kenya’, is grounded in field work, 2012 - 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2019. Using Kenyan women’s gender and citizenship rights as a focal point, this work argues that human rights discourse creates particular kinds of recipients of rights, and often compels these subjects to inhabit their new, human rights based identities in limiting and problematic ways. Her current work focuses on the experiences of people of diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and/or expression working in agri-food supply chains in Samoa funded through the Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR).

Christina has also worked with a variety of human rights based organisations in research, policy development and advocacy in Australia and sub-Saharan Africa including the Australian Human Rights Commission, the Australian Migration and Refugee Review Tribunals, The Australian Govt. Department of the Attorney General; the Women’s Legal Centre (Cape Town) and the South African Human Rights Commission; the British Institute of Eastern Africa, the Network of African National Human Rights Institutions, and the Kenya Human Rights Commission in Nairobi.

In this role she manages a suite of programs for agriculture, forestry and fishery scientists and policy makers across the Asia Pacific. Her professional experience includes delivering leadership skills training; delivering conflict and fragility advisory services; gender and social inclusion advisory services; specialised training design in leadership for peace, and women, peace and security; capacity building; dialogue design; monitoring and evaluation; partnership brokering; and facilitation of high-level meetings and dialogues.

Image: Rebecca Spence (middle) with Meryl Williams fellows, Hai Ly Huong (right) and Team Thi Thuy Ha (left)

Her research examines gender systems in agriculture in the Global North and South. She is co-Chief Investigator on a study on how gender shapes farm succession processes in the Australian context. This follows from a study of literature across the Global North and case law in Australia. From 2017-2020 she interviewed female entrepreneurs in agriculture, finding that women are more likely to engage in niche, sustainable food production due to barriers to entry in productivist agriculture and social and environmental values. New female farmers are also entering this space in response to eco-anxiety and shifting environments that are disrupting traditional patterns of privilege in Australian agriculture. With Tasch Arndt and Ellyse Fenton she conducted a study on gendered performance of new female farmers in the Netherlands and Australia. Following state retreat from service provision and increasing competitiveness and complexity in agriculture, women in the Australian context are developing new businesses providing professional services to producers. This coincides with research on the professionalisation of the agricultural labour market more broadly with Katherine Bassett, Alison Sheridan and Masood Azeem. Currently she is examining how policy targeted at women in agriculture in Australia is classed, heteronormative and racialised and promotes traditional hierarchical binaries of farmer and farmer’s wife. With Nicolette Larder, Amy Lykins and Cassandra Sundaraja she is researching producer and consumer attitudes toward short-supply chain food systems.

Erika is a rural development researcher whose expertise spans the diverse sectors of agriculture, gender, innovation, and value chain development on focused projects. She has substantial experience using mixed methods approaches for policy and program evaluation. She also has several years of experience conducting research in different countries across Southern Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. She collaborated on several ACIAR projects involving innovation and gender. Erika holds a PhD in rural development from Newcastle University.