For the past decade it’s been my pleasure to lead Tufts University’s role in creating the ANH Academy, a global platform serving over 10,000 researchers and policy analysts linking agriculture, nutrition and health. Membership in the ANH Academy is free, and you are welcome to join us here.
The ANH Academy platform was built and is maintained by the IMMANA project, funded by UKAid and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation as INV-002962 since 2020, and previously as OPP1211308 for work from 2015 to 2020. IMMANA stands for Innovative Methods and Metrics for Agriculture and Nutrition Actions. In 2024-25, Tufts activities for IMMANA are managed by Project Administrator Alex Knueppel and Postdoctoral Researcher Elena Martinez, with part-time assistance from Hayley Fryling.
Our first role in the ANH Academy is to leadership of the IMMANA Fellowships program, offering full-time stipends to support a year of transformational research and policy analysis. Since our founding, we have funded eight rounds supporting a total of 44 fellows whose work is described on their profile pages. The call for applications into a ninth round of fellowships will be launched in October 2024, for 12-month projects that would start between June and December 2025. Details will be all over social media and posted online, or you can email Alex at immanafellowships@tufts.edu.
A second role has been to build the platform’s SCANR resources website. This Support Centre for Agriculture-Nutrition Research serves ANH Academy members with research guidance and teaching resources, including blog posts and use cases to help researchers cross into new fields and disciplines, finding the data products and software tools needed to address cross-cutting aspects of agriculture, nutrition and health. You can see it all online, or email Elena at scanr@tufts.edu.
The third focus of Tufts work is creation of ANH Academy Research Communities, providing monthly events for ANH Academy members to share methods and results in specific areas of common interest. The first of these is our Research Community on Food Access. The community’s purpose is to facilitate peer-to-peer discussion about software tools, data sources and other aspects of the research process, in monthly roundtable conversations and drop-in office hours. You can sign up online, or email Alex at researchcommunities@tufts.edu.
