My research interests focus on understanding how humans engage and negotiate their environments to produce well-being. I am particularly interested in community and household strategies that promote or detract from nutrition security, as measured by child growth. I combine theory and methods from biological and cultural anthropology to address these issues, using data that are both quantitative and qualitative. For example, I might measure children and collect data on food consumption and/or days ill, but I would also observe and discuss with research participants the complex interactions among people and their ecological, social, political-economic and cultural environments.

Currently, I am collaborating with UK colleague, Dr. Lisa Cliggett, on an NSF sponsored project to examine the relationship between livelihood strategies and food and nutrition security among Gwembe Tonga migrants in Zambia, Africa. In 1958, the construction of the Kariba Dam along the Zambezi River displaced approximately 57,000 Gwembe Tonga people, who were then forcibly resettled into areas which provided less than adequate resources for successful livelihoods. Since that time, many Gwembe Tonga have undertaken a secondary migration to a frontier region in an effort to improve living conditions. Our 2004 field season suggested that these migrant people were adapting to new ecological, political and social conditions through a variety of livelihood strategies that incorporated traditional and newer activities. Since that time, our work has focused on how and why various households construct and utilize different livelihood strategies in context of new and shifting circumstances, and how successful they are as measured by the health and nutritional status of their children.

Research Interests

Biocultural anthropology; nutritional anthropology; livelihoods and food/nutrition security; the political-economy of child growth; the biology of inequality; human adaptability.

About Me

Biocultural anthropology, nutritional anthropology, livelihoods and food/nutrition security, political-economy of child growth, biology of inequality, human adaptability; Belize, Eastern Kentucky, Zambia.

Courses Taught

• ANT 230 Introduction to Biological Anthropology
• ANT 333 Contemporary Human Variation
• ANT 350 Food Politics
• ANT 440 Anthropological Perspectives on Child Growth and Development
• ANT 603 Human Biology in Context of Sociocultural Change
• ANT 607 Food-Related Behaviors
• ANT 646 International Health: People, Institutions and Change
• ANT 774 Malnutrition and Food Security in a Changing World

• In press   Crooks, Deborah L., Lisa Cliggett and Rhonda Gillett-Netting
  Migration following resettlement of the Gwembe Tonga of Zambia: The Consequences for Children's Growth. Ecology of Food and Nutrition.
• 2007  Crooks, D. L., Cliggett L., Cole S.M.
  Child growth as a measure of livelihood security: The case of the Gwembe Tonga. American Journal of Human Biology 19(5):669-675.
• 2007  Cliggett L. and D. L. Crooks
  Promoting multi-methods research: Linking Anthropometric methods to migration studies. Migration Letters 4(2):63-75.
• 2003  Crooks, Deborah L.
  Trading nutrition for education: Nutritional status and the sale of snack foods in an eastern Kentucky school. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 17:182-199.
• 2000  Crooks, Deborah L.
  Food consumption, activity and overweight among elementary school children an Appalachian Kentucky community. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 112:159-170.
• 1999  Crooks, Deborah L.
  Child growth and nutritional status in a high poverty community in eastern Kentucky. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 109:129-143.
• 1998  Crooks, Deborah L.
  Poverty and nutrition in eastern Kentucky: The political-economy of childhood growth. In Alan H. Goodman and Thomas L. Leatherman (eds): Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 339-355.
• 1997  Crooks, Deborah L.
  Biocultural factors in school achievement for Mopan children in Belize. American Anthropologist 99:586-602.
• 1995  Crooks, Deborah L.
  American children at risk: Poverty and its consequences for growth, health and school achievement. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology 38:57-86.