African Studies Program

George Armstrong is currently an Anthropology graduate student in IU’s new Food Studies Masters program. His studies are supported by a Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship (FLAS) for Swahili. He is an enthusiastic gardener of African plants and an intern at the IU/Deam Herbarium where he assists on a botanical survey of Indiana flora. His research interests center around ethnobotanical and horticultural topics in East Africa and Madagascar. He is especially interested in the flower Catharanthus roseus, which is used to produce two chemotherapy drugs on the WHO’s Essential Medicines List. In the coming years he plans to use English, Swahili, and eventually Malagasy to investigate the environmental, neocolonial, and food-security problems related to the cultivation of this flower on large farms in Africa.

George is also a professional photographer. Check out his work at: https://www.ghaphoto.com