Shauna LaTosky
Assistant Professor, Anthropology

Dr. LaTosky is a socio-cultural anthropologist interested in gender, pastoralism and indigenous cultural heritage in East Africa. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research in Southern Ethiopia since 2003, publishing on the interaction of gender, rhetoric, material culture and on practices of relatedness and processes of social change in the Lower Omo Valley. Her most recent publication Rhetoric and Social Relations: dialectics of bonding and contestation (Abbink and LaTosky, 2021) explores the constitutive role of rhetoric in socio-cultural relations. She conducts most of her research with Mun (Mursi) agro-pastoralists on themes that are of contemporary relevance to the communities with whom she works, from conservation and tourism, to indigenous education, food sovereignty and customary land use practices. Her recent interest in visual anthropology focuses on how visual ethnography can not only be applied and participatory, but rhetorical and interventional. She is currently working on an indigenous-led ethnobotanical film project: Milking the marula (choboy): How the Mun agro-pastoralists relish the foods of the forest for the Guardians of Productive Landscapes (GPL) project and film series.