Echi (Christina) Gabbert is a social anthropologist with extensive fieldwork experience in southern Ethopia. Her research on conflict and peacemaking among agro-pastoralists resulted in the award winning PhD thesis 'Deciding Peace' at the Max-Planck-Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany. Echi's research foci reach from interethnic relations, agro-pastoral forms of subsistence and ecology, peace and conflict studies, material culture, oral history and music, to global markets and investment in Eastern Africa. At our institute, she is a research fellow and lecturer working in close collaboration with Nikolaus Schareika. Echi is currently developing the 'Global Neighbourhood approach' and coordinates the 'Lands of the Future' research network that connects scholars and practitioners who address land use changes on agro-pastoral territories.

At the Academy, she was a research fellow and participated in the conference "Negotiating concepts of nature and future in Africa"