Here are some of the research projects I have been involved in. My work spans rural livelihoods, landownership, and recognition in Papua New Guinea; food systems and climate justice in Jamaica; marine plastics and aquaculture in Vietnam; and research culture and interdisciplinary collaboration in the UK, and the use of gamification as both a research method and a community engagement tool.
Games for Research and Interdisciplinary Dialogue (GRID)
Project Lead
The project is part of the Wellcome Trust-funded InFrame framework for research leadership. It explores challenges to interdisciplinary research collaboration and the skills to solve them through the co-design of a board game.
Healthier Science Through Collaboration (HxC)
Project Manager/Researcher
Funded by the UKRI-MRC this project aims to amplify the voices of interdisciplinary scientists from diverse backgrounds, with the goal of fostering positive and sustainable culture change by embedding good practices within research teams and organisations.
Sources, Sinks, and Solutions for the Impact of Plastics to Coastal Communities in Viet Nam (3SIP2C)
Postdoctoral Research Fellow – Community Engagement and Communication
Funded by the UKRI-GCRF this project aimed to better understand the flow, pathways, and destinations of micro- and macro-plastics in coastal Viet Nam. Working with fishers, aquaculture farmers, tourism businesses and schools it explored the challenges of plastic pollution on rural livelihoods and its impacts on human and animals health.
Teaching Climate Justice and Resilience through Ancestral Plant Heritage in Jamaica
Project Co-Investigator
Project funded by the ESRC Impact Acceleration Grant that brought together youth, teachers, practitioners, and artists to learn about plant heritage and climate just agricultural systems. The main aims were to develop teaching materials that provided both historical and cultural knowledge about food systems in Jamaica, as well as practical activities and healthier recipes for a climate just word.
Masks, Land, and Recognition among the Baining people of Papua New Guinea
Doctoral Research – PhD in Social Anthropology
The research included 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Papua New Guinea and investigated how a group of Papua New Guinean people, positioned at the far margins of a growing global palm oil market, understand and negotiate their cultural identity in relation to hopes for development and positive social change. It offers unique insights into the processes and tensions created by colonial land reform, secondary conversion to Pentecostal Christianity, and large-scale plantation agriculture.
An interdisciplinary project that re-connected Caribbean youth and their elders through reflective activities encouraging them to share knowledge and think about Caribbean food heritage, production, and consumption in the context of climate change resilience and action. The project used a combination of games and immersive sensory interviews to maximise engagement as it was conducted fully online during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Power, Agriculture, and Land at the Margins: Exploring Papua New Guinea’s Rural Development Strategy
with Oil Palm (PALM-PNG)
CAHSS-GCRF Postdoctoral Research Fellow
The project explored the impacts of economic and socio-ecological change resulting from plantation-style oil palm farming on sustainable cocoa farming and tropical forest management in Melanesia and Southeast Asia. It created strategic partnership between local communities, artists, non-governmental organisations, and research institutions in Papua New Guinea, Germany, and the UK.
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Inna Yaneva-Toraman 