Profile
Efrat Gilad

Efrat Gilad

Co-Investigator, Global Health Centre
Spoken languages
English, French, Hebrew, Arabic

AREAS OF EXPERTISE:

  • Nutrition and Public Health
  • Political Ecology of Food and Agriculture
  • Environmental Humanities
  • Food Systems, Commodity Chains, Food Technology
  • Global History (20th Century)

  • Colonialism and Settler Colonialism

     

PROFILE:

Dr. Efrat Gilad is a Co-Investigator in the MILE Project (Multilateralism: Inclusion, Legitimacy, Ecosystems) hosted at the Global Health Center.

A historian by training, Efrat holds a PhD in International History and Politics from the Geneva Graduate Institute (summa cum laude, 2021), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation’s Doc.CH grant. Specializing in the political, economic, cultural, and environmental dimensions of food systems in colonial contexts, her research has been recognized internationally, for example, by the European Society for Environmental History as the winner of the 2023 St Andrews Best Article Prize and by the Swiss Academy of Humanities and Social Sciences as a finalist for the 2026 SAGW Early Career Award. As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Bern, she expanded her interdisciplinary work across environmental studies, ecology, and sustainability.

Efrat has held teaching and research positions at the Geneva Center for Security Sector Governance (DCAF), the University of Bern, the Geneva Graduate Institute, and IMD Business School Lausanne. Her teaching has spanned environmental history, colonialism and environmental conflict, and food systems, while her public scholarship has reached international audiences in multiple languages.

To the MILE Project and the Global Health Center, Efrat brings a systems-oriented perspective to global health governance, examining the governance of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) within wider historical, political, and environmental contexts. She also leads the MILE Project’s research communication efforts, translating research findings into accessible, relevant, and useful formats for academic, policy, and public audiences.

 

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:

Efrat Gilad, “Professor Frenkel’s Fake Flesh: A History of ‘Synthetic Meat’ (1949-1953)”, Food, Culture and Society (2025) *Finalist for the 2026 SAGW Early Career Award.

Efrat Gilad, review of Meat Matters: Ethnographic Refractions of the Beta Israel, by Hagar Salamon, Agricultural History 100, no. 1 (2026): 142–143, https://doi.org/10.1215/00021482-12134536.

Efrat Gilad, “Camel Controversies and Pork Politics in British Mandate Palestine”, Global Food History (2022) *Winner of the 2023 St Andrews Best Article Prize, European Society for Environmental History.

Efrat Gilad, “’The Child Needs Milk and Milk Needs a Market’: The Political Economy of Nutrition in British Mandate Palestine”, Gastronomica 21 (2021): 7–16

Efrat Gilad, “Settler Histories and Sustainable Meats”, History Workshop Online, 2021

Interviewed by Dan Graham, “Food Production and Consumption during COVID-19”, What Matters Today Podcast, 2020.

Efrat Gilad, “Is Settler Colonial History Urban History?”, Global Urban History Blog, 2020.