The personal is political.
My research uses critical feminist and ecological lenses to examine the social, political, and economic organization of everyday life. Using ethnographic, archival, and participatory research methods, my scholarship moves beyond critique to envision and advocate for a politics of the possible. In so doing, I strive to identify concrete strategies for transitioning to just and sustainable systems of production and consumption. My current book project, “The Labor of Lunch: A New Economics of Care in American Public School,” focuses on the National School Lunch Program (NSLP). In the book, I argue that we must rethink and subsequently revalue the labor of lunch if the NSLP is to reach its full potential as a force for public good. My research on the NSLP has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation, the Baldwin Wisconsin Idea Endowment, the Meta Schroeder Beckner Endowment Grant, and the Institute for Research in the Humanities. I am also the principal investigator of a research project in South Madison—funded by US Department of Agriculture and the Center for Child and Family Well-being—that examines issues of food provisioning and food justice among an inter-generational group of parents, children, and youth.