I am a member of the Food Justice Working Group at Binghamton University. We are partnering with the Broome County Food Council in NY and now with the Kent County and Upper Shore Food Councils in Maryland to provide comparative research on how like communities frame and enact food policy plans.

I have been working with colleagues at Michigan State University and University of Wisconsin at Madison to develop, implement and study a workshop adapted for undergraduate researchers from the Toolbox Dialogue Initiative used by research teams that promotes interdisciplinary consciousness and communication as critical competencies.

In my book, From Farm to Canal Street, I tell the story of how Chinatown's food network operates amid—and against the grain of—the global trend to consolidate food production and distribution. This work is based on 10 years of ethnographic research to understand the development of a food system that displays unique and alternative characteristics to the industrial food system.

The Chesapeake Semester is a 16 credit experiential learning immersion program in which students devote an entire semester to interdisciplinary exploration of the Chesapeake Bay watershed through classroom, field based and an international study component in Belize.

The McNair Scholars Program diversifies doctoral degree holders in the US. Supported by the US Department of Education, it provides summer research stipends and other supports for underrepresented minority, low-income and first generation students to be gain acceptance in graduate degree programs.

The Source Project is a first-year research immersion program in the humanities and social sciences at Binghamton University that I piloted in 2018 with the support of faculty and senior leadership. Now it thrives as a feature program of Binghamton. Students grapple with societal concerns by engaging in research, presenting, and publishing their work to become knowledge producers.

We explore woodland, grassland, and wetland sites at the River and Field Campus to learn the taxonomy and cultural significance of native and invasive species.

This course will investigate food systems in particular communities of interest, local or global, through group or individual projects. Students will learn how to employ ethnographic methods in their investigations.

Beth Choate, Deputy Director of CES, and I sent an op-ed to the Baltimore Sun to express our support of the new Whole Watershed Act. It was published on April 29, click in to read.

Featuring recipes, detailed profiles, and behind-the-scenes photographs from 43 restaurants covering some 18 cuisines across 24 neighborhoods, Made Here is a handsome new tome self-published by Send Chinatown Love.

We will be able to expand Washington College's River and Field Campus through the generous support of Mt. Cuba Center. Their mission to preserve native plants through thoughtful cultivation and garden design is consistent with ours.

We'll be presenting on our food council work, this time focussing on the 2024 conference theme of the right to food as commons. We will consider how food councils frame their approach to food justice.

Imbruce will present on "Food Justice and Urban Change in a Historic Chinese Neighborhood" at the Global Asia Colloquium at NYU on April 19, 2024, 4 - 7pm in 53 Washington Square South (KJCC) room 701.

Secretary Kurtz and members of his leadership team visited us at Washington College to strengthen our partnerships. Read more here.