Current Research
My research examines how labor, migration, race, and environmental change shape food and agricultural systems across the Americas. Working at the intersections of environmental social science, anthropology, food studies, and labor studies, I study how workers, farmers, and communities navigate—and contest—the institutions and cultural narratives that determine whose labor, knowledge, and relationships to land are valued.
Across my research, I am interested in a central question: what would it take to make transitions toward more sustainable food systems also more socially just? I approach this question through interconnected projects on migrant labor and small-scale meat processing, transformations in animal agriculture, farmer perspectives on labor and environmental policy, and the racial and cultural politics of food. Methodologically, I combine ethnography, interviews, surveys, participatory action research, and collaborative public scholarship.
Labor, Migration & Small-Scale Meat Processing
My current research, supported by a USDA-NIFA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship, examines worker experiences in small-scale meat processing in the Upper Midwest. Research on meatpacking has documented the dangerous working conditions, racialized labor regimes, and reliance on immigrant and refugee workers that characterize much of the industrial meatpacking sector. At the same time, smaller and regional processing facilities are increasingly promoted as alternatives to consolidated meat production and as critical infrastructure for more resilient and sustainable regional food systems. Far less is known, however, about what these alternative models mean for workers. Through comparative ethnographic fieldwork at small-scale processing facilities, interviews with workers, participatory workshops, and a multi-state survey of meat processors, I examine how plant scale, ownership, regulation, immigration, workplace culture, and production models shape working conditions. I am particularly interested in workers' own understandings of what constitutes good, dignified, and ethical work, as well as in the tensions that emerge when businesses attempt to reconcile commitments to animals, communities, local economies, and workers.
This project asks when, and under what conditions, small-scale processing can provide meaningful alternatives to industrial meatpacking. In collaboration with workers, labor educators, and food-system organizations, I am also developing worker resources, case studies, workshops, and policy recommendations intended to translate research findings into practical tools for improving working conditions.
Just Transitions in Animal Agriculture
A second strand of my research examines efforts to transform animal agriculture in the U.S. Midwest and the social and political questions embedded within transitions toward more sustainable forms of production. My doctoral research followed farmers, farmworkers, advocates, researchers, and organizations working to transform livestock and dairy agriculture through practices and models including managed grazing, cooperative ownership, alternative land access, and regional food-system development. Drawing on more than 120 interviews, participant observation, policy research, and participatory workshops, I examined how people working toward agricultural change understood both the possibilities and limitations of sustainability transitions. This research approaches agricultural sustainability as more than a question of adopting environmentally beneficial practices. Transitions also reorganize relationships among land, labor, capital, knowledge, and power. I therefore ask who is positioned to participate in alternative agricultural futures, whose knowledge and labor are recognized within them, and how histories of racial exclusion, land dispossession, labor exploitation, and agricultural consolidation shape what kinds of transformation are possible. My work in this area has examined the politics of managed grazing, barriers to land access, racial and environmental justice within alternative agriculture, and the possibilities and limitations of participatory research as a strategy for building more just food-system transitions.
Policy Perspectives on Agriculture, Labor, and Environment
Another strand of my research examines labor and environmental policy in agriculture. As part of my doctoral research, I designed and implemented a 2023 statewide survey of Wisconsin dairy farmers, which received responses from 661 farmers and allowed me to investigate how farmers' values, identities, labor arrangements, and production practices shape their perspectives on agricultural policy. The survey examines support for different approaches to agricultural governance, including incentives and regulations addressing farm labor, conservation, water quality, and grazing. I am particularly interested in the relationship between environmental and labor policy perspectives and whether farmers who express strong commitments to environmental stewardship also support policies intended to improve conditions for agricultural workers, and how different understandings of what it means to be a “good farmer” shape these positions. This work brings quantitative evidence into conversation with my ethnographic research to examine how agricultural identities, material conditions, and institutional relationships shape the politics of food-system change.
Food, Race & Cultural Politics Across the Americas
A longer-standing strand of my scholarship examines how food participates in the construction of race, nation, Indigeneity, migration, and belonging across the Americas. My research on yerba mate, a plant native to South America with deep Indigenous histories, traces how foods and agricultural commodities acquire new racial and cultural meanings as they move across national borders. I examine how the commercialization of yerba mate in the United States selectively mobilizes narratives of Indigeneity, health, nature, and South American identity while simultaneously reproducing particular forms of whiteness and belonging. This work informs my broader interest in the movement of both foods and people across the Americas. Across projects, I examine how commodities, workers, and cultural narratives travel through transnational food systems—and how race and colonial histories shape whose mobility, labor, and relationships to place become visible or valued. Together with my research on migrant labor in U.S. agriculture and food processing, this scholarship contributes to a broader research agenda concerned with how food systems produce and contest racialized forms of belonging across geographic and political boundaries.
Participatory Research & Public Scholarship
Participatory and community-engaged research is central to how I approach my work. I am interested in creating opportunities for workers, farmers, organizers, and community partners to shape research questions, interpret findings, and determine how research might be useful beyond academic publication. My participatory work has included collaborative research design, farmer learning circles, stakeholder workshops, worker-centered participatory activities, and partnerships with labor and food-system organizations. These collaborations have produced public reports, policy-oriented research, educational resources, and other materials designed for use by communities and practitioners. At the same time, my research critically examines participatory methods themselves. Participation does not automatically redistribute power, and university-community collaborations take place within institutions with their own inequalities and constraints. I therefore approach participatory action research both as a methodological practice and as an object of inquiry, asking what meaningful collaboration requires and what universities can(not) contribute to movements for more just and sustainable food systems. Across these projects, my goal is to produce research that helps explain how inequality is reproduced within food systems while identifying the institutional, political, and collective conditions through which different futures become possible.
