A sabbatical leave allows a professor to step away from regular teaching and other campus duties to focus on research and scholarship so that they can bring new knowledge and skills back to the campus and their students. Sometimes, faculty use sabbaticals to return to distant research sites or to complete projects abroad (as I did in Brazil during a previous leave). However, my spring 2024 “stay-bbatical” took me no further away than my home office. I spent the semester intensively writing an article on edible insects for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies.
In 2021, I published the book, Edible Insects: A Global History (Reaktion Press), featuring historical and contemporary accounts of entomophagous (that is, insect-eating) societies. The article for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia was a different task. It had to be, well, encyclopedic! In it, I cover a wide range of topics such as new research on the nutritional and fiber content of insect foods, food allergy and safety concerns, and governmental regulations and ethical guidelines for insect cultivation. Without concentrated time for reading (the article has 196 references) and writing, I would not have been able to produce this work in a timely manner.
Turns out I was not the only one thinking about insects (and eating them) last spring. The co-emergence in Illinois of the 13-year cicada Brood XIX and the 17-year Brood XIII set everyone, ahem, abuzz! I received lots of questions about their edibility (yes, you can eat cicadas), requests for interviews, media commentary, and presentations about cicadas and edible insects in general. Unfortunately for me, Bloomington-Normal did not experience the mass emergence of either of the periodic broods.
Because I was on leave and at home, I was also able to engage in extra community activities and service. I facilitated an “Essential Skills” course at Dreams are Possible, a local nonprofit that empowers women and nonbinary individuals with skills and confidence to prepare them for living wage jobs. I also served as a reviewer for the Illinois Department of Agriculture’s Resilient Food Systems Infrastructure (RFSI) grant program. The goal of the RFSI program is to create more economic opportunities within the local food system. Along with other judges, I reviewed dozens of proposals from middle-of-the-supply chain businesses—such as fruit and vegetable processors and transporters—for assets that would allow them to retain more of the value chain dollar.
As I return to campus for the 2024-25 school year, I’m looking forward to teaching an Advanced Honors seminar on Insects as Food and Feed that will draw directly from my sabbatical reading. In the spring, I teach an anthropology seminar called Food, Place and Power, which addresses the issues that the RFSI grant seeks to ameliorate. I am excited to be back in the classroom.
I am incredibly grateful to the University for granting me sabbatical leave, and to the faculty colleagues who stepped up to take over my campus responsibilities. Thank you, Dr. Liv Stone, associate professor of Anthropology, who assumed my teaching and advising duties, and Dr. Robyn Seglem, professor of middle level literacy and technology in the College of Education, who filled in as interim director of the Office of Student Research.
