Catie Gressier

Catie Gressier is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the School of Agriculture and Environment (SAgE) at The University of Western Australia (UWA), a European Research Council-funded researcher at Uppsala University’s Department of Anthropology and Ethnology, and a PhD candidate in Creative Writing at Curtin University. Formerly an Australian Research Council (DECRA) Fellow (2020–2023), her research explores the intersections of cultural practices, environmental adaptation, and identity formation in settler communities, with a focus on Australia and southern Africa.

Education: PhD in Anthropology (UWA), former HDR Education Coordinator at the University of Notre Dame (2017–2019), and University of Melbourne McArthur Fellow (2012–2017).

Research Focus: Catie’s work examines foodways, heritage livestock conservation, agroecology, identity politics, and tourism studies. Her books include At Home in the Okavango (2015), Illness, Identity and Taboo among Australian Paleo Dieters (2017), and the upcoming Saving Heritage Breeds: A Love Story (2025). She co-leads the Ecology, People, Place (EcoPeoPle) network and serves on the editorial board of Anthropological Forum.

Awards & Grants: Current ARC grant Raising Rare Breeds: Domestication, Extinction and Meat in the Anthropocene (2020–2024). Notable publications include studies on wild meat consumption (Australian Journal of Anthropology, 2016), safari hunting in Botswana (Ethnos, 2014), and paleo diet cultures (Palgrave, 2017).

Labs & Collaborations: Active in interdisciplinary networks linking anthropology, environmental science, and creative writing. Recent media engagements include Conversations in Anthropology podcast (2021) and articles on livestock conservation (Perth researcher’s mission to preserve rare farm breeds, 2021).