PhD Student

Before joining the research group as a PhD student, I completed a BA degree in African Studies at the University of Leipzig and an MA in Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg. With a regional focus on East Africa, my research interests include the intersection of medical and environmental anthropology, multispecies ethnography, decolonization of knowledge, as well as forced migration and humanitarianism. 

For my master’s project, I conducted field research in the Bidibidi refugee settlement in Uganda, critically examining the lived realities of the country’s internationally lauded “progressive” refugee policies.

My PhD project focuses on the use of antibiotics and medicinal plants among poultry keepers in rural Tanzania. It investigates how socio-economic, institutional, and material conditions shape antibiotic practices that contribute to antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Concurrently, the project examines the (re)turn to medicinal plants as rooted in poultry keepers’ situated expertise concerning animal behavior and local ecologies. By bringing these different forms of poultry care into dialogue, the project seeks to move beyond AMR interventions that target individual behavior change and to explore how holistic approaches to poultry health could inform sustainable, context-specific strategies for addressing AMR.

E-Mail: vivien.barth@bnitm.de