Catching up with the Quinlans

Associate Professor Marsha Quinlan researches medical anthropology and ethnobiology. She completed medical anthropology and ethnobotany research in Dominica, West Indies. Having investigated the ethnomedicine of conditions that locals consider illnesses, Quinlan advised graduate student Katie Flores through a master’s thesis investigating Dominican ethnomedicine of reproductive health. Locals do not view reproductive health conditions as “illnesses.” Marsha and Flores are now finishing a book on Dominican ethnophysiology and medical ethnobotany, which they hope will be in print by next fall.

During the last four years, Marsha has been engaged in two East African multi-site projects that take an ethnobiological, one-health approach (i.e., studying interrelations of human, animal, and environmental health). In Ethiopia, she (in a U.S.–Ethiopian anthropological team) investigated Sidama traditional enset–cattle–human interdependence; new farming shifts (responses to changing climate, land ownership, and food security); and psychological corollaries of subsistence change. Her student Katie Flores (who also worked in Ethiopia on Dr. Courtney Meehan’s breastfeeding projects) is conducting dissertation research on environmental influences on Sidama reproduction and contraception.

For an interdisciplinary multi-cultural project in Tanzania, Marsha collaborated with a team of researchers in WSU’s School of Global Animal Health and the Department of Anthropology (including Professor Robert Quinlan and current and former WSU doctoral students Mark Caudell, PhD 2016; Casey Roulette, PhD 2015; and Jennifer Roulette, ABD). This is a study of livestock medication, human–animal interaction, and antibiotic/antimicrobial resistance with Maasai, Warusha, and Chaga pastoral and agro-pastoral ethnic groups. Marsha directed the Chaga field research. They found that lay use of antibiotics varied by ethnic group, as did consultation with professional veterinarians and observation of withdrawal of meat and milk from consumption during and following antibiotic treatment of livestock. Ethnicity, “sectors of veterinary care” (professional, popular, and folk sectors), and livelihood strategies thus strongly associated with antibiotic use and human exposure to antibiotics.

Among Maasai and Arusha, humans had significantly (p<0.001) higher prevalence of resistant bacteria compared with Chaga. They also studied medicinal plants and ethnomedical views. Marsha’s student Jen Roulette will graduate this year with a dissertation on health intervention implications of Maasai children’s health education and perceptions of ethnobiology and illness. Her advisee Cynthiann Heckelsmiller will start a dissertation on Maasai ethnobotanical learning and plant use.

Most recently, Marsha has begun acting on her life-long geographic interest in Latin America. She conducted pilot research on dog–human interaction in two Guatemalan sites, one Ladino, the other K’iche’ Maya. She advised Amy Snively-Martinez’s dissertation (PhD 2017) on South Guatemala smallholders’ increasing reliance on backyard poultry and on human antibiotics to treat poultry. Armando Medinaceli (co-advised by Marsha and Rob Quinlan) conducted half of his dissertation, Ethnobiological Collaboration with Two Societies of the Latin American Tropics, in Guatemala with Q’eqchi’ Maya. Amanda Thiel completed thesis research in Guatemala on medicinal plants in Q’eqchi’ Maya home-gardens. Marsha maintains interest in ethnobotany, her intended focus for future research is on the culture of human–animal interaction, specifically on health implications of human interaction with dogs in Mesoamerica.