Professional Interests

Dr. Thompson’s research interests focus on analysis of global economic relations (e.g. trade agreements, privatization, debt), which constrain small scale farmers’ ability to sustain biodiversity and to provide food security. In Southern Africa, she works with environmental organizations, which collaborate at the grassroots level with farmers building their own seed banks and seed trusts. Since 2004, Dr. Thompson has been invited to Chiapas, Mexico and to Costa Rico to lead workshop discussions about how indigenous peoples in Latin America and Africa could resist pollution of their crops by genetically-modified pollen, as well as to resist patenting of life forms.

An activist scholar, Dr. Thompson is on the executive of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, which raises African development concerns within the US government. She was recently part of a briefing team on Zimbabwe to the US Department of State and has testified in US Congressional hearings about policy toward Africa. Locally, she is active in the New Day Peace Center, which provides community peace education.

Recent Grant
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), with Gary Nabhan, ethnobiologist. "Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture: Status and Trends in its Conservation and Sustainable Use," 2006.

Most Recent Publications

Book:
Biopiracy of Biodiversity – Global Exchange as Enclosure, with Andrew Mushita. Africa World Press, 2007.

Journal Articles:
"Trading Partners or Trading Deals? The EU and USA in Southern Africa," with Colin Stoneman, Review of African Political Economy (London), July 2007.

“International Law of the Sea/Seed – Public Domain vs. Private Commodity.” Natural Resources Journal, (University of New Mexico), Vol. 44, No. 3, Summer 2004.

Policy Advocacy:
"Africa: Green Revolution or Rainbow Evolution?" Foreign Policy in Focus, July 2007, available at http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/4398

“US Trade with Africa,” Issue Editor. Bulletin, Association of Concerned Africa Scholars, Summer 2004. Issue has two articles written by NAU graduate students during seminars.

Undergraduate/Graduate Courses

Dr. Thompson frequently teaches International Environmental Policy, Politics of Developing Nations, and Political Economy of Africa at the undergraduate level. At the graduate level she teaches courses in Research Methods, International Political Economy (IPE), Comparative Politics, International Environmental Policy, and Southern Africa.