Miriam Waltz is assistant professor in gender justice and health technologies with a joint appointment between the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology and the African Studies Centre. Her research will focus on the development of an interdisciplinary hub on health technologies in Africa.

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She obtained a BA at University College Utrecht (2012) in Anthropology and Development Studies and an Hons (2013) and MA degree (2015) in Social Anthropology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Her research at UCT focused on ‘the first 1,000 days,’ exploring perinatal health and women’s experiences navigating health care institutions, technologies, and motherhood in Cape Town, South Africa.

In 2022 Miriam completed a joint PhD degree at Aarhus University, Denmark and University of Oslo, Norway, as part of an EU-funded project on the Anthropology of Human Security in Africa (ANTHUSIA). Her PhD research explored pesticide use in Western Kenya, investigating why smallholder farmers increasingly rely on synthetic pesticides to maintain subsistence agriculture in many places across Africa, despite widespread concerns about the effects of these substances on human bodies, plants, insects, and soils. The resulting dissertation shows how a conjunction of historical trajectories of ‘growth’ and ‘flows (of money, material substances, kinship), mutating landscapes, the non-knowability of pesticides, the withdrawal of government agricultural extension officers, the growing presence of NGOs, and changing approaches to diet and eating create ambiguous agricultural landscapes. With a focus on the practices, affects, and materialities of pesticide use, the dissertation argues that farmers sustain and change landscapes, and intervene in relations between people and other species, in an attempt to secure the growth of families, food, and economies.