Peer-Reviewed - Matthew A. Schnurr

Please contact me at matthew.schnurr@dal.ca for copies of any articles that you are unable to access through the links provided.

Salas, D., Sheik Heile, A., Schnurr, M.A., de Jong, M., Duff, M., Swanson, K. (2026). Seas of unfreedom: A scoping review of labour exploitation as a structural feature of global fisheries. Marine Policy, 191, 107147.

Global fisheries face a dual crisis of ecological decline and widespread labour exploitation. While “modern slavery” in fisheries has attracted significant attention, the evidence remains fragmented across disciplines, obscuring the systemic nature of the problem. This scoping review maps the current state of knowledge on labour abuses in marine-based fisheries and identifies critical geographic, thematic, …

Schnurr, M.A., Shilomboleni, H., Taylor, A. & Dowd-Uribe. (2025). Towards a more pluralistic approach to evaluating the farm-level impacts of new breeding technologies in sub-Saharan Africa. Genome, 68.

The Green Revolution’s objective of increasing yields precipitated an approach to impact evaluation that relied predominantly on econometric analyses to measure yield differences and how those differences impact farmer incomes. This paper explores the legacies of this assessment scholarship for New Breeding Technologies (NBTs) in sub-Saharan Africa. It examines three pervasive assumptions underpinning econometric-informed evaluative …

Shilomboleni, H., & Schnurr, M. A. (2025). Are disruptive agricultural technologies compatible with agroecology? Npj Sustainable Agriculture, 3(1), 21-25.

Agroecology has emerged as a credible approach to achieving sustainable and resilient agrifood systems. But the role for disruptive agricultural technologies within agroecology remains contentious. This paper examines the potential congruence for technology-driven and agroecology-driven approaches to agricultural development. We examine two case studies from east Africa—one focused on user-centered digital technology in Ethiopia and …

Fairbairn, M., Faxon, H.O., Montenegro de Wit, M., Bronson, K., Kish, Z., Ruder, S.L., Ezirigwe, J., Abdella, S., Oguamanam, C., & Schnurr, M.A. (2025). Digital agriculture will perpetuate injustice unless led from the grassroots. Nature Food, 6, 312–315.

Situating digital agriculture within recent histories of uneven agrarian development reveals its potential to perpetuate injustice. To avoid this outcome, we argue for innovation processes that centre the needs, knowledge and priorities of communities who work the land.

Addison, L., Gore, C., Bawa, S., & Schnurr, M.A. (2025). From negotiated to covert: married women’s agency in staple crop value chains in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa and Uganda. Canadian Journal of African Studies, 59(1), 91–112.

This article examines married women’s agency in marketing and income use for staple crops grown on jointly held fields in four African countries: cowpea in Ghana, maize in South Africa and Kenya, and matooke banana in Uganda. The article is based on a series of workshops in each country in which small-scale farmers participated in …

Peer-Reviewed Articles

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