Curriculum Vitae

African history, environmental history, agricultural history, the agro-ecology of tropical disease, food history, Ethiopia and East Africa

James McCann’s research interests include agricultural and ecological history of Africa, Ethiopia, and the Horn of Africa, field research methods in African studies, the agro-ecology of tropical disease, and the history of food/cuisine in Africa and the Atlantic world. He is the author of five books: Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine (2010); Maize and Grace: A History of Africa’s Encounter with a New World Crop (2005); Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land: An Environmental History of Africa (1999); People of the Plow: An Agricultural History of Ethiopia (1995); From Poverty to Famine in Northeast Ethiopia: Rural History, 1900-1995.(1989). He has published articles and reviews in the American Historical Review, Journal of African History, the International Journal of African Historical Studies, Comparative Studies in Society and History, the Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Environmental History, International Journal of Sustainability, and Northeast African Studies. His books have been reviewed in Nature, Foreign Affairs, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Times Educational Supplement.

His books have received awards and recognition including: the George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History (1996 for Maize and Grace); two-time finalist for the Melville Herskovits Prize for Best Book in African Studies (People of the Plow, 1996 and Maize and Grace, 2006); Choice Magazin Award for Outstanding Books (for From Poverty to Famine, People of the Plow). His book Green Land, Brown Land, Black Land has been used in university classrooms on five continents.

Prof. McCann has been a resident research fellow at the W.E.B. DuBois Center (Harvard University), the Program for Agrarian Studies (Yale University), the National Humanities Center, and the Institute for Ethiopian Studies. He has held research grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, Fulbright-Hays, the Cotsen Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has been invited to lecture at the Royal Swedish Academy, Oxford University, the University of London-SOAS, the University of Bologna, University of Naples (Orientale), Edinburgh University, the International Center for the Improvement of Wheat and Maize (Mexico City), the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, UNICEF, and the University of Sussex. He has served as consultant for OXFAM (UK), OXFAM America, Norwegian Save the Children, UNEP, and American Jewish World Service. He has been invited to give testimony at the House of Commons, Parliament and twice by the U.S. Congress.

He is currently Director of a five-year Rockefeller Foundation research project in collaboration with the Harvard School of Public Health investigating the agro-ecology of the cultivation of maize and malaria transmission in Africa.

His current research project is a book-length study on the history of malaria in Ethiopia: Like Bees in a Smoked Hive: the Historical Agro-ecology of Malaria in Ethiopia in preparation for the University of California Press.