Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University
Special Series Editor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
Research Interests
Agriculture | Biotech | Energy | Extraction | Feminism | Food | Futures | Lab Ethnography | Waste |
About Katie
I am a cultural anthropologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. My research focuses on petrochemical replacements made from sugarcane, including not only biofuels but sugar-based plastics, synthetic fabrics, solvents, specialty chemicals, and more. I was the Managing Editor of Platypus, the CASTAC blog, from 2023-24.
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Katie's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
The Sugar Library
This post is part of a series on the SEEKCommons project. Read the Introduction to the series to learn more. Sugar, particularly that from sugarcane, takes many different shapes and forms in the world. During my research on sugarcane in Brazil, the largest producer of the crop, I started tracking in a spreadsheet all the various forms of sugar or sugarcane I encountered in my fieldwork. I called this my sugar library. The below figures display some examples from the sugar library, grouped into thematic categories and listed without the various metadata included in the spreadsheet version. (more…) (read more...)
2024 in Review
Welcome to our annual wrap-up of CASTAC’s 2024 activities! We are grateful to all of you, our readers, for engaging with our content this year and we look forward to sharing more pieces on the anthropology of science and technology in 2025. (more…) (read more...)
Platypus in 2024
Welcome to Platypus in 2024! We look forward to continuing to publish content on science and technology from anthropological and social science perspectives. We remain grateful to all our readers, as well as our community of Platypus volunteers who keep the blog running. (more…) (read more...)