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My current book project investigates the epistemic politics of "first food" activism through a comparative analysis of the Navajo Nation Breastfeeding Coalition, African American Breastfeeding Network, and La Leche League, particularly as they have organized into what I conceive as two loosely demarcated breastfeeding and breastfeeding equity movements. I have published from this project in Environmental Justice (lead article, 2018) and Breastfeeding Medicine (2017). My book manuscript is in preparation.
After working together during fieldwork associated with my book, in January 2019 the African American Breastfeeding Network and I co-launched WE-RISE (Water and Environmental Research for Infants' Safe Eating). Our study engaged community members, activists, students, and professional researchers in centering urban families' experiences during lead contaminated drinking water crises, through survey and community conversation methodologies. We supported local health workers in research and training, and we produced an annotated bibliography of existing research on infant feeding during water contamination crises to support lead elimination activists, at the particular request of members of the grassroots Coalition on Lead Emergency. Results from our study are published in the Journal of Human Lactation. The American Sociological Association's Community Action Research Initiative, Middlebury College's Undergraduate Collaborative Research Fund, and St. Lawrence University supported our work.
I also analyze the intersections of environmental justice movements with other struggles, including climate activism. I recently published on this topic with Summer Gray, Corrie Grosse, and Brigid Mark in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Previously, I completed my dissertation, Cultivating Local Food: Knowledge, Power, and (Trans)Formations in American Policy and Society , which investigates the way distinct racialized and place-based communities mobilize knowledge in urban food systems, and to what effect. My data is qualitative and includes over seventy-five interviews, observation, and an analysis of municipal archives in both Detroit and Cleveland. I published from this project in Science as Culture (special issue on justice and counter expertise, 2019), Urban Farm Magazine (2015), and with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) for their What Makes Urban Food Policy Happen? report (2017). The Erb Institute funded this work.
I have also conducted shorter qualitative research projects concerning the global epistemic dimensions of intellectual property rights debates in food and agriculture (published in Mobilization: An International Journal, 2015, winner of the Society for the Study of Social Problems' Best Graduate Student Paper, Global Division, and University of Michigan's Mark Chesler Research Award), disparities in inclusion in environmental impact statements (published in the Michigan Journal of Sustainability, 2013), and the ethical treatment of human subjects of research (with Raymond De Vries, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 2011). The Government of Canada, Center for Public Policy in Diverse Societies, and National Institutes for Health supported this work, respectfully. More recently, I employed a case study of a Vermont-based fish company as a means to unpack notions of "local" and "sustainable" (published in the journal Food and Food Ways, 2018, and funded by my postdoctoral fellowship at Middlebury College).
After working together during fieldwork associated with my book, in January 2019 the African American Breastfeeding Network and I co-launched WE-RISE (Water and Environmental Research for Infants' Safe Eating). Our study engaged community members, activists, students, and professional researchers in centering urban families' experiences during lead contaminated drinking water crises, through survey and community conversation methodologies. We supported local health workers in research and training, and we produced an annotated bibliography of existing research on infant feeding during water contamination crises to support lead elimination activists, at the particular request of members of the grassroots Coalition on Lead Emergency. Results from our study are published in the Journal of Human Lactation. The American Sociological Association's Community Action Research Initiative, Middlebury College's Undergraduate Collaborative Research Fund, and St. Lawrence University supported our work.
I also analyze the intersections of environmental justice movements with other struggles, including climate activism. I recently published on this topic with Summer Gray, Corrie Grosse, and Brigid Mark in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Previously, I completed my dissertation, Cultivating Local Food: Knowledge, Power, and (Trans)Formations in American Policy and Society , which investigates the way distinct racialized and place-based communities mobilize knowledge in urban food systems, and to what effect. My data is qualitative and includes over seventy-five interviews, observation, and an analysis of municipal archives in both Detroit and Cleveland. I published from this project in Science as Culture (special issue on justice and counter expertise, 2019), Urban Farm Magazine (2015), and with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) for their What Makes Urban Food Policy Happen? report (2017). The Erb Institute funded this work.
I have also conducted shorter qualitative research projects concerning the global epistemic dimensions of intellectual property rights debates in food and agriculture (published in Mobilization: An International Journal, 2015, winner of the Society for the Study of Social Problems' Best Graduate Student Paper, Global Division, and University of Michigan's Mark Chesler Research Award), disparities in inclusion in environmental impact statements (published in the Michigan Journal of Sustainability, 2013), and the ethical treatment of human subjects of research (with Raymond De Vries, published in the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics, 2011). The Government of Canada, Center for Public Policy in Diverse Societies, and National Institutes for Health supported this work, respectfully. More recently, I employed a case study of a Vermont-based fish company as a means to unpack notions of "local" and "sustainable" (published in the journal Food and Food Ways, 2018, and funded by my postdoctoral fellowship at Middlebury College).
