Dr Charlotte Milbank
- Research Programme Manager, The Indigenous Partnership on Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty
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About
Charlotte Milbank is an interdisciplinary PhD student in Epidemiology and Geography at the University of Cambridge. She holds a Master’s degree in Epidemiology from Cambridge, completed following her undergraduate degree in Geography. She has completed research in Burkina Faso, Kenya and India, and now holds the position of Academic Fellow within the Indigenous Peoples' Global Hub at the Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations (FAO).
She is passionate about contributing to research that improves public health and food security for Indigenous Peoples. Her PhD research examines whether "wild foods", including bushmeat, insects, wild fruits and vegetables, can contribute safely to food and nutritional security and human health in rural communities, whilst supporting conservation efforts. Based in the tribal districts of Eastern India, her research speaks to the concerns of the "One Health" research approach, a growing body of work that recognises the complex entanglement of the environment, human and animal health in issues of public health concern, including zoonotic spillover.
Research
My MPhil and PhD research engages with how wild food knowledges in a given context can be harnessed for sustainable food security. Wild foods are those which are neither cultivated or purchased, but caught or collected, and are a key component of diets for some forest-dependent communities. This research will help assess the extent to which food security strategies might yield positive nutrition and health outcomes, while building on locally appropriate knowledge systems in relation to wild foods to inform effective interventions.