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.

Food equity includes the right to food that is cul­turally appropriate. That right is challenged in immigrant neighborhoods where the participants and spaces of food production, distribution, and consumption are contested.

I worked with Stephen Fan, architect and designer, to use a tested framework developed by City As Living Laboratory to engage art with science in community forums to investigate and promote sustainable urban food systems. This project led to design products, a story map and multiple publications you can find in the publications section below.