Dr Gizem Haspolat

Dr. Gizem Haspolat is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Economics at SOAS, University of London, where she is a member of the Critical Research on Industrial Livestock Systems (CRILS) Network. 

Her research examines the political economies of industrial livestock production, with particular attention to the infrastructures, technologies, and forms of expertise that underpin contemporary agribusiness. Working across anthropology of capitalism, political economy, science and technology studies, and agrarian studies, she investigates how state policies, veterinary medicine, environmental governance, and global commodity chains shape livestock production. Through ethnographic research, her work explores the relationships between animals, capital, and the material infrastructures that sustain industrial food systems.

She received her PhD in Anthropology from Rice University, where her dissertation examined Turkey's live cattle imports under the country's "cheap meat" policy. Through this work, she traced how veterinary interventions, logistics, and regulatory frameworks transform living animals into commodities across transnational supply chains. Her current research expands this agenda by examining the changing forms of knowledge, labour, and human–animal relations emerging through the adoption of precision livestock farming technologies and artificial intelligence in industrial agriculture.

• Industrial livestock systems
• Political ecology
• Animal mobilities
• Veterinary medicine and expertise
• Food systems.