Katharine McNamara conducted her dissertation fieldwork in Loja, Ecuador, where she studied residents’ use of an endangered medicinal tree known as Cinchona officinalis.
Source: UF College of Public Health & Health Professions
Katharine McNamara, Ph.D., a 2024 graduate of the Ph.D. program in One Health at the University of Florida College of Public Health and Health Professions Department of Environmental and Global Health, has received the 2025 Marianne Schmink Outstanding Dissertation Award.
Presented by the Tropical Conservation and Development program at UF’s Center for Latin American Studies, the award recognizes outstanding scholarship that exemplifies theoretical innovation, methodological rigor and a commitment to bridging research and practice.
“The past recipients are such a distinguished group of Tropical Conservation and Development alums, and many have gone on to have incredible careers in and outside of academia,” McNamara said. “It is such an honor to be counted among them.”
Supported by a Fulbright Hayes Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad, McNamara’s dissertation involved a year of field research in Loja, Ecuador, where she examined how residents adapted their use of an endangered medicinal tree known as Cinchona officinalis, or quina, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The bark of the tree, called cascarilla, has long been used in the Andes to treat fevers and is a component in medicines such as quinine and hydroxychloroquine. Her dissertation explores how people’s relationships with medicinal plants such as quina change during disease outbreaks, and how these shifts affect the health of humans, plants and the environment.
The first article from McNamara’s dissertation will be published this December in a special issue on farming medicinal plants in the journal Culture, Agriculture, Food and Environment. She will also present these findings at the UF Tropical Conservation and Development program’s TropiLunch event in January.
McNamara is currently completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she is contributing to the Equitable Mobilities for Climate Adaptation project. The project aims to leverage the perspectives and experiences of people facing housing instability to support more effective climate adaptation programs and policies. Her fieldwork has taken her to London, United Kingdom, and Durban, South Africa, for collaborations with researchers at King’s College London and the University of Kwa-Zulu Natal. She plans to conduct fieldwork at two other project sites in Nunavut, Canada, and Sindupalchowk, Nepal, next year.
“My role on the project is identifying cross-cutting learnings from the project’s four hubs to better understand how creative and arts-based methods can inform transformational adaptation,” McNamara said.