Joeva uses ethnographic methods to study the interplay of food, politics, and development.
An anthropologist, Joeva's research examines changing agricultural and development landscapes in Africa, and the actors and processes shaping them. Her first project examined the development of, and contestations over, genetically modified (GM) crops in Ghana, with a focus on plant breeding, regulatory and patent law, and anti-GM activism. Her book on this project, We are not starving: the Struggle for Food Sovereignty in Ghana (Michigan State University Press, 2022), an ethnographic exploration of how efforts to introduce GM crops are transforming Ghanaian foodways, political institutions, and environmental governance.
Joeva's second project examines GM crops on the African continent more broadly. This includes mapping the development and outcomes of GM crops as the co-director of the Mapping Biotechnologies in Africa Project, and examining the governance and regulation of GM crops using ethnographic inquiry.
She is also engaged in a historical project assessing the work of the Sasakawa Global 2000 (SG2000) program and its efforts to spark a "Green Revolution" in Africa.
Joeva's research has been funded by the British Academy, Fulbright-Hays Program, and the Wenner-Gren Foundation. Prior to coming to Cambridge, Joeva was a lecturer at the University of California, and held postdoctoral fellowships at Dalhousie University and New York University. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from American University.
