Strengthening the humanity and dignity of people in crises through evidence and learning
Faculty and Researchers
Merry FitzpatrickResearch Assistant Professor
Research Assistant Professor, Friedman School of Nutrition
Click here to read Merry’s Young Scholar Profile.
Merry’s research interests span two separate but related fields. She has had a long-term interest in livelihoods and food security in conflict and post-conflict settings. The focus of this work is on supporting local strategies that households and communities use to mitigate, cope with, and recover from the effects of conflict. More recently, she has been studying the etiology of kwashiorkor malnutrition in order to design preventive interventions in extremely low resource settings and biomarkers to indicate the early stages of kwashiorkor. Although Merry has worked in most regions of the world, her research interests are primarily in central Africa around the Great Lakes, and the Sahel.
Merry has more than 20 years of field experience in humanitarian response. She worked with multiple humanitarian agencies, including the International Rescue Committee, GOAL Ireland, and Food for the Hungry. Most recently, at World Concern she was the Relief Director and then the Senior Director for Technical Support. With Feinstein she conducted research on the Somalia famine, resilience and livelihoods in Darfur, Sudan, and pastoralism. Additionally, she was the international research team leader on the Sudan Humanitarian Assistance and Resilience Program (SHARP) and continues to contribute to the center’s research.
Merry holds a B.S. in chemistry from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.B.A. with a concentration in international development from Hope International University, an M.Sc. in food policy and applied nutrition and a Ph.D. from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts.
- Local strategies to maintain livelihoods and food security in conflict settings
- Famine causes and prevention
- Malnutrition, specifically the etiology of kwashiorkor malnutrition
- the Sahel (Niger, Chad, and Sudan)
- central and east Africa
Famine, Livelihoods, and Resilience: Food Security Analysis and Response in Crisis and Crisis-Prone Contexts (Directed Study, Spring Term)
- Fitzpatrick, M., Kurpad, A., Duggan, C., Ghosh, S., & Maxwell, D. “Dietary intake of sulfur amino acids and risk of Kwashiorkor in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.” American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. (2021 pending). doi: 10.1093/ajcn/nqab136.
- Fitzpatrick, M., Ghosh, S., Kurpad, A., Duggan, C., & Maxwell, D. “Lost in Aggregation: The Geographic Distribution of Kwashiorkor in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.” Food and Nutrition Bulletin. (2018). doi:10.1177/0379572118794072
- Maxwell, D., & Fitzpatrick, M. “The 2011 Somalia famine: Context, causes, and complications.” Global Food Security 1, no.1 (2012). 5-12.
News Items
Merry Fitzpatrick joins The Conversation podcast to discuss “Maladie de Famine”
Jewish doctors in the Warsaw Ghetto secretly documented the effects of Nazi-imposed starvation, and the knowledge is helping researchers today – podcast Starvation was omnipresent in the Warsaw Ghetto for both…
Read MoreAbubakr Siam, Merry Fitzpatrick share learning about COVID-19 in North Darfur
Abubakr Siam, El Thahir A. El Tahir, and Merry Fitzpatrick published their blog “Responses to COVID-19 Pandemic in El Fasher and rural areas of North Darfur, Sudan” on the Sudan…
Read MoreFeinstein Research Projects
Preventing Famine in the 21st Century
This project reconsiders our understanding of famines, the dynamics that give rise to famines, the resilience of populations subjected to these dynamics, and the means of prevention at the disposal of governments, humanitarian agencies, donors, and the affected populations.
Read MoreLocalization of Humanitarian Assistance
This research program seeks to understand the enabling and hindering factors that support localized or locally led humanitarian responses to natural disasters, conflicts, and prolonged complex emergencies.
Read MoreFeinstein Publications
“Co-investigators but with different power”: Local voices on the localization of humanitarian research
Building on a previous report on the localization of humanitarian assistance, this study focuses on issues unique to the localization of humanitarian research.
Read MoreFamine Prevention: A Landscape Report
This study reviews what we have learned regarding policies and interventions to prevent famine, and how these can be scaled up more rapidly.
Read More