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My current book project investigates the racialized and gendered epistemic politics of infant food access and activism. Using slave testimony, medical association archives, and oral histories, I describe how dominant groups in America have historically de-contextualized and privileged certain knowledges to foster infant feeding inequalities that vary by community. Based upon interviews with activists, a selection of government and non-governmental archives, and observation in breastfeeding support spaces, I then underscore how women have developed unique organizations, including La Leche League, the Navajo Nation Breastfeeding Coalition, and the African American Breastfeeding Network, to facilitate the (re)activation of lived knowledge among distinct communities and resist this oppression. I investigate these groups' histories, strategies, and variations in their epistemic work. I conclude that when these organizations link in ways that advance heterogeneous, non-hierarchical knowledge production, they contribute to the building of a transnationally-networked breastfeeding equity movement women of color lead to (re)claim all families’ power. 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). This pilot study engages community members, activists, students, and professional researchers in centering urban families' experiences during lead contaminated drinking water crises to foster improved environmental disaster relief. We are currently surveying sixty families in the highest-risk areas of Milwaukee and will be conducting focus groups later this year. The American Sociological Association's Community Action Research Initiative and Middlebury College's Undergraduate Collaborative Research Fund support our work.
Previously, I completed my dissertation, Cultivating Local Food: Knowledge, Power, and (Trans)Formations in American Policy and Society, which also investigates the way distinct racialized and place-based communities mobilize knowledge, and to what effect. My data is qualitative and includes over seventy-five interviews, observation, and an analysis of the cities’ archives. I have published from this project in Science as Culture (special issue on justice and counter expertise, 2017), Urban Farm Magazine (2015), and with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems for their What Makes Urban Food Policy Happen? report (2017). The Erb Institute provided funding for this work.
I have also completed shorter qualitative research projects concerning the global and 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 environmental impact statement participation (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). These works were funded by the Government of Canada, Center for Public Policy in Diverse Societies, and National Institutes for Health, 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).
Please contact me for full copies of my publications.
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). This pilot study engages community members, activists, students, and professional researchers in centering urban families' experiences during lead contaminated drinking water crises to foster improved environmental disaster relief. We are currently surveying sixty families in the highest-risk areas of Milwaukee and will be conducting focus groups later this year. The American Sociological Association's Community Action Research Initiative and Middlebury College's Undergraduate Collaborative Research Fund support our work.
Previously, I completed my dissertation, Cultivating Local Food: Knowledge, Power, and (Trans)Formations in American Policy and Society, which also investigates the way distinct racialized and place-based communities mobilize knowledge, and to what effect. My data is qualitative and includes over seventy-five interviews, observation, and an analysis of the cities’ archives. I have published from this project in Science as Culture (special issue on justice and counter expertise, 2017), Urban Farm Magazine (2015), and with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems for their What Makes Urban Food Policy Happen? report (2017). The Erb Institute provided funding for this work.
I have also completed shorter qualitative research projects concerning the global and 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 environmental impact statement participation (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). These works were funded by the Government of Canada, Center for Public Policy in Diverse Societies, and National Institutes for Health, 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).
Please contact me for full copies of my publications.
