The Community-Engaged Food and Environmental Justice Studies Hub will be led by an interdisciplinary team of UMD faculty, including Dana Lindaman, associate professor of French and head of the Department of World Languages and Cultures and Aparna Katre, associate professor of Cultural Entrepreneurship. The Food Justice Hub will utilize the holistic tools of these fields to address the cultural factors and social processes needed for systemic solutions.
“Support from the Mellon Foundation will enable the University of Minnesota Duluth to lead an organized, integrated, and sustained engagement of university resources that amplify our work and facilitate the growth of resilient community resources across socio, economic, cultural, demographic, and political groups,” says project co-lead Lindaman. “We do not have a global food shortage, but rather a shortage of justice in how and for whose benefit decisions about food systems and their environmental and social impacts are made.”
One of ten awardees selected nationally from the Mellon Foundation’s 2024 Higher Learning Open Call to support environmental justice studies, the Food Justice Hub will partner with Northeast Minnesota organizations and associations to direct projects that matter to the community and combine concerns around food and environmental justice in order to transform research, curricular advancement, and policy discussions.
This work is inspired by recent priorities set by regional leaders focused on health equity, healthy food choices, and food security. Duluth, the economic hub for the region, has been identified as a climate refuge and anticipates rapid growth driven by climate migration.
“The Food Justice Hub will strengthen our college’s relationship with the Duluth community while building the University’s capacity to be a leader in national conversations on food and environmental justice,” says Jennifer Brady, interim dean of CAHSS. “This hub is a shining example of how we are deeply committed to centering a humanities-based approach to solving social problems.”
The Community-Engaged Food and Environmental Justice Studies Hub will be supported by the Institute for Advanced Study, a University of Minnesota systemwide hub for interdisciplinary collaboration reporting to the executive vice president and provost. The Food Justice Hub was one of three projects from the University of Minnesota system that collectively received $1.5 million from the Mellon Foundation in 2024. The others include:
- The Center for Canon Expansion and Change at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, to expand the center’s mission of broadening the philosophical canon and training educators to teach around a broader set of ideas, led by Assistant Professor Dwight K. Lewis Jr. (Philosophy) and Associate Professor Jessica Gordon-Roth (Philosophy).
- A Critical Disability Studies Initiative at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, to establish an intersectional and transnational critical disability studies curricular program in the College of Liberal Arts, led by Assistant Professor Jessica Horvath Williams (English), Associate Professor Jennie Row (French & Italian), Research Assistant Angela M. Carter (RIDGS), and Assistant Professor Erin Durban (Anthropology).