Photo: Dr. Wolfgang Staudt
Karen Hahn is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Ecology, Evolution and Diversity, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Goethe-University. She is a vegetation ecologist conducting research in Africa since the 1990th with a strong focus on West African savannas. Her scientific interests comprise the fields of ecology and plant diversity in savanna ecosystems under climate change and land use impact as well as ethnobotanical research on the use and valuation of wild plant species and their sustainable use. Her special focus in regard to millets is to evaluate the impact of current shifts from these dominant staple crops to cash crop cultivation in West African savanna areas. The aim is to achieve a better understanding how wild food availabilities closely interconnected with millet farming change under commercial agriculture expansion and which implications this has for smallholders’ wild food provisioning and strategies in regard to wild food tree species.
