I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology as well as an affiliate faculty member in Comparative Studies, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Environmental Sciences Graduate Program at Ohio State. My research centers primarily on human cultural relationships to plants, soils, and waste. Specifically, I have studied the contemporary management of Amazonian Dark Earth (an anthropogenic soil associated with pre-colonial Indigenous settlements of the Amazon region) as well as the botanical diversity found in association with it. I have also investigated the role that social networks play in the distribution of crop varieties found in rural Amazonian communities as well as hiring practices in American academic anthropology. Most recently, I have been investigating the use of biosolids (i.e. treated sewage sludge) for agricultural production, urban gardening, landscaping, and ecological restoration in the American Midwest. Though much of my work is disseminated through peer-reviewed research articles and books, I also contribute regularly to popular journalistic outlets including NPR, The Atlantic, The Conversation, and SAPIENS as well as informal multimedia publications, such as podcasts, blogs, and zines.

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Selected Recent Publications

Kawa, N.C. Forthcoming. After the Flush: Rethinking the Future of Human Waste. Oakland: University of California Press.

Kawa, N.C. 2026. Welcome to the Anthropozine! DIY Booklets an an Alternative to the Peer-Reviewed Publication. American Anthropologist. 

Singh, P., Kawa, N.C., Sprunger, C.D. 2024. "More Questions than Answers": Ohio Farmers' Perceptions of Novel Soil Health Data and Their Utility for On-Farm Management. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. 48(1): 74-92.

Kawa, N.C. 2024. Five Key Concepts for Human Inquiry into Plant Lifeworlds. Journal of Ethnobiology 44(4): 426-429.

Kawa, N.C. 2021. Who Gets to Be an Author? Anthropology of Work Review 43(2): 72-79.

Kawa, N.C., Arceño, M.A., Goeckner, R., Hunter, C., Rhue, S.J., Scaggs, S.A., Biwer, M.E., Downey, S.S., Field, J.S., Gremillion, K., McCorriston, J., Willow, A., Newton, E., and Moritz, M. 2021. Training Wicked Scientists for a World of Wicked Problems. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 8: 189

Hoelle, J.A., and Kawa, N.C. 2021. Placing the Anthropos in the Anthropocene. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 111(3): 655-662.

Kawa, N.C., Clavijo Michelangeli, J.A., Clark, J.L., Ginsberg, D., and McCarty, C. 2019. The Social Network of U.S. Academic Anthropology and Its Inequalities. American Anthropologist 121(1): 14-29.

Current Graduate Students

Anqi Chen
Abigail Musch