Elizabeth Hull

Fellow, SCAS.
Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Chair of the Food Studies Centre, SOAS University of London


Elizabeth Hull has been conducting ethnographic research in the province of KwaZulu-Natal in South
Africa since 2006. Her research focuses on diverse livelihood practices and food access, and how
these activities relate to experiences of citizenship, aspiration, and state expectations. A theme running
through her research concerns the ways in which familial and social values intersect with fluctuating
values for labour, money, or food.

Hull’s first book, Contingent Citizens: Professional Aspiration in a South African Hospital (2017) ex-
plored the ambiguous status of South Africa’s public-sector workers. Focusing on a resource-constrained
government hospital, Hull showed that nurses experienced professional identity as necessary but insufficient
for meeting aspirations. Based on these findings, she argued that formal sector work is both a privileged and
a precarious site of citizenship-making in contemporary South Africa. Recently, her research has focused
on the experiences of people working in food-based livelihoods, and how they are rebuilding rural food
systems after Covid-19. Her research has been published in leading anthropology, development and regional
journals including World Development, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, and Africa: Journal
of the International African Institute.

While a resident fellow at SCAS, Hull will be researching how people in South Africa are navigating economic
and political volatility while securing food and income for their families.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2024-25.