Participant Info
- First Name
- Jenny Leigh
- Last Name
- Smith
- Country
- Hong Kong
- State
- jenny.smith@ust.hk
- Affiliation
- Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
- Website URL
- http://www.huma.ust.hk/cgi-bin/people/people_index.php?action=view&type=F&profile_id=361
- Keywords
- famine, NGOs, humanitarian aid, development, disaster relief, food supply, agriculture, Soviet Union, environmental history, history of technology
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- based in Hong Kong (GMT +8)
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I am writing a book about 20th Century famines and what they can teach us about 21st Century food security and disaster relief responses. I am especially interested in how emergency foods evolved, and also in how the science of industrial management revolutionized responses to famines. In 2016-2018 I received a $200,000 fellowship from the Carnegie Foundation in support of this research.
I am also an expert on Soviet agriculture and the long-term impacts of socialist agricultural and environmental policies. In 2014 I published a book with Yale University Press on this subject called Works in Progress: Plans and Realities on Soviet Farms, 1930-1963. It won the 2014 Henry A. Wallace award from the Agricultural History Society.
I am co-editor (with Tom Robertson) of a volume about the environmental legacy of international development projects. The book, entitled Transplanting Modernity, is forthcoming from University of Pittsburgh Press. This project grew out of a workshop Tom and I held in 2015 that was supported by grant from the NSF.
Finally, as well as having a rewarding academic career, I have a hobby I am very devoted to–I help run Hong Kong’s finest independent English language bookshop, Bleak House Books. As a result, I know a lot about Hong Kong’s literary culture, its publishing industry and the ins and outs of running an indie bookshop on the doorstep of mainland China!
- Recent Publications
- Media Coverage
- Social Media
- @JennyLeighSmith
- Country Focus
- Soviet Union, Cambodia, Nigeria
- Expertise by Geography
- Russia, Southeast Asia
- Expertise by Chronology
- 20th century, 21st century
- Expertise by Topic
- Capitalism, Economic History, Environment, Food History, Rural & Agrarian History, Science, Technology
