My current book project, First Food Justice, is a wide-ranging, intersectional analysis of women claiming and (re)claiming agency over infant feeding in America. In exploring who feeds infants what foods, where, and when, I demonstrate that how many women feed their babies represents a larger struggle against American patriarchy and white supremacy. Why do many women feed as they do, then? To resist. To reclaim. To recover. To empower. This analysis disrupts common narratives of women, including black and indigenous women, as passive bystanders in the colonization of their communities and ill-equipped to steer the defining act of nourishing babies. Theoretically, it shifts the study of first foods and infant feeding from the domain of public health towards their role in upholding and undoing unjust systems. I also discuss these issues in forthcoming articles in the journals Environmental Justice and Breastfeeding Medicine. Data for this project is qualitative and includes interviews, content analysis (e.g. of social media sites), archival analysis (e.g. of both pertinent federal and grassroots organizations' records), and observation (e.g. at breastfeeding support groups and conferences). The Creating Connections Consortium funds this research.
In my previous project, I examined the comparative politics of local food with a focus on Detroit and Cleveland, USA. Data for this project includes over 75 in-depth interviews, over 48 hours of observation, and hundreds of primary source documents. I published findings from this study in the Erb Institute's White Paper Series and the popular national magazine Urban Farm. A scholarly manuscript from this project, "Localizing Detroit’s Food System: Boundary-Work and the Politics of Experiential Expertise ", is forthcoming in a special issue on justice and counter expertise with the journal Science as Culture. Additionally, I am working with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) to co-author a case study on Detroit for their upcoming series on sustainable cities.
I have also completed qualitative research projects concerning the global and epistemic dimensions of intellectual property rights debates in food and agriculture (published in Mobilization: An International Journal, winner of the Society for the Study of Social Problems' Best Graduate Student Paper, and winner of the University of Michigan's Mark Chesler Research Award), disparities in environmental impact statement participation (published in the Michigan Journal of Sustainability), and the ethical treatment of human subjects of research (with Raymond De Vries, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics). Recently, I also completed a case study of a Vermont-based fish company as a means to unpack notions of "local" and "sustainable" (an article from this research is in under review in the journal Food and Food Ways).
Please contact me for full copies of my publications.
In my previous project, I examined the comparative politics of local food with a focus on Detroit and Cleveland, USA. Data for this project includes over 75 in-depth interviews, over 48 hours of observation, and hundreds of primary source documents. I published findings from this study in the Erb Institute's White Paper Series and the popular national magazine Urban Farm. A scholarly manuscript from this project, "Localizing Detroit’s Food System: Boundary-Work and the Politics of Experiential Expertise ", is forthcoming in a special issue on justice and counter expertise with the journal Science as Culture. Additionally, I am working with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) to co-author a case study on Detroit for their upcoming series on sustainable cities.
I have also completed qualitative research projects concerning the global and epistemic dimensions of intellectual property rights debates in food and agriculture (published in Mobilization: An International Journal, winner of the Society for the Study of Social Problems' Best Graduate Student Paper, and winner of the University of Michigan's Mark Chesler Research Award), disparities in environmental impact statement participation (published in the Michigan Journal of Sustainability), and the ethical treatment of human subjects of research (with Raymond De Vries, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics). Recently, I also completed a case study of a Vermont-based fish company as a means to unpack notions of "local" and "sustainable" (an article from this research is in under review in the journal Food and Food Ways).
Please contact me for full copies of my publications.
