Obituary
Christina Gladwin
Retired University of Florida (UF) Professor of Food and Resource Economics, Christina Gladwin, died at the home of her son, Mark Gladwin, on September 16, 2015, after a 12 year struggle with multiple myeloma. After earning her undergraduate degree from Catholic University in Washington, DC, in 1964, Professor Gladwin attended the School of Social Science at the University of California at Irvine before transferring to the PhD Program in Agricultural Economics at the Food Research Institute at Stanford University. Her PhD research focused on the Plan Puebla in Puebla, Mexico. After receiving her PhD from Stanford in 1978, Professor Gladwin received one of the first Rockefeller Foundation Post-doctoral Social Science Fellowships to work with the International Fertilizer Development Center in Guatemala. In conjunction with her postdoctoral work, she worked with the National Institute of Science and Agricultural Technology. After a brief stint teaching at Northwestern University she came to the UF in 1980 from which she retired in 2005. Professor Gladwin was the first woman to achieve the rank of Full Professor in UF’s Food and Resource Economics Department and in a technical field at the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS). At UF she was also affiliated with the Department of Anthropology as well as the University’s federally funded interdisciplinary Centers for African Studies and Latin American Studies as well as the University’s outstanding Farming Systems Research and Extension program in IFAS. She is the author, co-author, and editor of three books and more than 50 referred journal articles and chapters as well as dozens of extension papers on the decision making process of small scale producers and marketers. She conducted research in Ghana (1967-1968), Mexico (1973-1974), Guatemala (1977-1979), Malawi (1987; 1995-2000), and north Florida (1980-1989). She was one of the first social scientists to use “decision tree analysis” as a mechanism to help researchers and policy makers understand the multiple factors that influence decision making by smallholder farmers. Her interests include the changing structure of agriculture, the demise of the full time family farm and the survival of the part time family farm; the role of women in the family farm and the increase in women’s farming in industrial agriculture as well as women’s roles in agriculture in Africa and Latin America; the cognitive relationship between norms, plans and decision processes; and large-scale shifts in norms of choice behavior.
Generous with her time and hospitality, Professor Gladwin nurtured many students and had many friends and admirers. She was born in Cranston, Rhode Island, the daughter of Rose and Christopher Horn. As a high school student, she was the tri-state (Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut) champion in golf which nurtured her lifetime love of golf. She was an avid gardener and enjoyed hiking and camping with her children and grandchildren in Montana. In 2006 Professor Gladwin started the business “Global Toddlers,” which produced baby and children’s clothes in collaboration with a woman’s cooperative in Zambia. The original designs from Global Toddlers were selected for a number of art shows and festivals –including the Dulles Art Festival in Washington, DC, the Sunfest Art show Fort Lauderdale, and the Fall and Spring Santa Fe Art Festivals in Gainesville, Florida. Until the last year of her life, she enjoyed participating in art shows around the country to sell the Global Toddler clothes. Professor Gladwin is survived by her sister Cecily Damour and her husband Alfred Damour of Chester, Virginia; son Dr. Mark T. Gladwin, his wife Dr. Tammy Shields and their three children-- Flora Sierra Gladwin, Brendan Shields Gladwin, and Rowan Terrence Gladwin of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – and her daughter Amy Gladwin, her husband Eric Lilienthal, and their children Emma Serrano Lilienthal and Ava Esther Lilienthal of Hamilton, Montana. In lieu of flowers the family is requesting that contributions can be made in her honor to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, 383 Main Avenue, 5th Floor, Norwalk, CT 06851. Checks should be made out to the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.