About the team
KRISTIN REYNOLDS,,
PH.D.
Kristin Reynolds (she/her) is a critical food geographer based in New York City, with research focus in the US and France. Her scholarship and activism focus on informing the creation of socially just food systems in urban and rural spaces.
Kristin’s first book Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City, (2016; University of Georgia Press, with co-author N. Cohen), examines and highlights the work of people of color and women to create more socially just systems, and the possibilities for scholarship to support such initiatives.
Her recent research has focused on the social justice and policy implications of commercial urban agriculture in New York City and Paris; on heritage grains and food sovereignty in Eastern France; and on inequities experienced by immigrant and racialized farmworkers in the South of France. She also works with colleagues to advance the praxis of food and justice scholarship and activism through communities of practice and the lens of radical food geographies, the topic of a forthcoming edited volume co-edited with C. Hammelman and C. Levkoe to be published by Bristol University Press’ Food and Society Series in 2024.
As an educator and scholar, Kristin teaches about global food systems, social justice, urban agriculture, and food policy as Chair and Assistant Professor of Food Studies at The New School. From 2013-2022, she taught on social justice in the global food system at Yale School of the Environment, where she is now an Affiliated Faculty at the Yale Center for Environmental Justice. She is also an associate research fellow at the European School of Political and Social Sciences in Lille, France. Kristin is co-founder and convener of the Food Justice Scholar-Activist/Activist Scholar community of practice, within the Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers, of which she has served on the Executive Board.
Kristin has worked with many community-based nonprofit organizations and small-scale farms through her research, teaching, and consulting. These include the New York City-wide Farm School NYC; Corbin Hill Food Project; Brooklyn Grange rooftop farms in Queens and Manhattan; La Finca del Sur in the South Bronx; EcoStation:NY, BK Farmyards, and Hattie Carthan Community Garden in Brooklyn; and Harlem Grown in Manhattan, as well as the national Food Chain Workers Alliance and HEAL Food Alliance. She has led and collaborated on curriculum design at several institutions of higher education, including for a first-of-its-kind associate in science degree program in Food Studies at Hostos Community College (a part of the City University of New York and located in the South Bronx).
As a part of her support for community-driven change, she has led participatory evaluation processes for food and environmental organizations, including Farm School NYC; East New York Farms!; and Soul Fire Farm in upstate New York, where she served on the founding Board of Directors of Soul Fire Farm Institute from 2015-2020. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Levitt Foundation since 2014.
Kristin holds a Ph.D. in Geography and M.S. in International Agricultural Development from the University of California, Davis, and bachelor’s degrees in International Soil and Crop Sciences and French Language and Literature from Colorado State University. She has lived and worked on numerous farms in the United States and Europe.
CONSTANCE L. SMITH, M.S. CANDIDATE
Constance L. Smith (She/They) is a second year Master of Science candidate at The New School majoring in Environmental Policy and minoring in Capitalism Studies. They are also a first year joint Mellon Initiative for Faculty Excellence and Tishman Environment and Design Center Fellow. Their background is in critical theory and environmental science and they have a minor in Brazilian Portuguese. Constance’s research involves combining environmental science with decolonial theories, marginalized feminist theories, queer theories of mourning and melancholia, Black radical ecology and geography, and historical analysis, among others, to unravel the hauntings and horrors of colonialism and coloniality. Specifically, she is interested in understanding how enduring colonial mechanisms shape our relationship to the land and reproduce the economization and commodification of nature, forcing marginalized peoples to engage in extractive and destructive commodity markets in the periphery. She hopes to focus on issues such as food and land sovereignty as a means of combating false climate solutions, modern imperialism, and (neo)colonialism.
On top of her studies, Constance works as a graduate research assistant for Dr. Reynolds. With Dr. Reynolds, they are helping create the Food and Social Justice Action Research Lab at The New School and working on additional research activities as part of the Lab. This includes a project funded by The Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Policy Research Center at Alcorn State University that examines social equity within urban agriculture federal institutions and programs.
BÉNÉDICTE CALLEC, M.S.
After receiving her bachelor’s degree (license) in European Political Science, Bénédicte Callec completed the Masters in Food Politics and Sustainable Development at the European School of Political and Social Sciences (ESPOL) at the Catholic University of Lille in France. Her thesis, supervised by Dr. Brendan Coolsaet, examined questions of food sovereignty in the wheat supply chain in France. Over the two years of her Master’s program, she also completed an internship and is currently a research assistant with Dr. Reynolds, as part of a project on heritage grains and food sovereignty. Led by the French organic agriculture organization Bio en Grand Est and Dr. Reynolds, the project seeks to create networks between farmers in the Champagne Ardenne region of Eastern France who are, or would like to, grow farmer-bred heritage grains, or semences paysannes. Having finished her Master’s degree in 2022, Bénédicte continues to work as a research assistant on the semences paysannes project. In parallel, she also earned a baking diploma in France (CAP) in 2022 and continues to seek hands-on learning at alternative bakeries, while contemplating a future doctoral project surrounding the concept of food sovereignty.
AGOSSÈ NADÈGE DEGBELO, M.A.
Agossè Nadège Degbelo is currently a doctoral student in Sociology of the Environment at the Institut National de Recherche sur l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement (National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and Environment, INRAE) in France. Attached to the research unit on Environment, Territories in Transition, Infrastructures, and Societies (ETTIS) at the University of Bordeaux, her doctoral research (under the direction of Dr. Jacqueline Candau and Dr. Valérie Deldrève) examines issues of environmental justice surrounding farmworker exposure to pesticides in the workplace in France. Her project brings together environmental health, human health, and intersectional inequities grounded in the approach of justice by “capacities,” by mobilizing empirical quantitative data (obtained by using the database cohorte française AGRICAN : AGRIculture et CANcers) alongside qualitative data on precarious and foreign workers not well represented within the cohort of agricultural workers.
As an instructor at the University of Bordeaux, Nadège guides university students at the bachelor’s level (“licence” in France) in qualitative and quantitative survey research and analysis. While studying for her Masters Degree in Sociology (2019) also at the University of Bordeaux, and as a sociology researcher, she completed several projects including a study for the Mutualité Sociale Agricole (MSA) that sought to identify and understand challenges connected to access to primary health care in the rural area of Aulnay de Saintonge, identified as a “medical desert.” In addition to her doctoral research, Nadège is currently working with Dr. Reynolds on a new project addressing inequities experienced by immigrant and racialized farmworkers in the South of France. More about her work and publications are found here.
CÉDRIC GOTTFRIED, M.A.
Cédric Gottfried is currently in his third year of the Ph.D. program in Urban and Public Policy at The New School. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Applied Foreign Languages (English and Spanish) at University of Besançon in France, a Masters in Cultural Heritage Management at University of Angers, and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers in Paris. He has worked as a consultant and project manager for agencies and organizations in the fields of heritage preservation and planning, including the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the Institut pour la Ville en Mouvement in Paris, as well as private firms. He has worked as a research associate for the Urban Space Lab run by Prof. Joseph Heathcott, Chair of Urban and Environmental Studies at The New School, primarily on the Gerda Henkel Foundation-funded project “Life in the Rust Archipelago: Natural and Human Ecologies after Capital Flight”. He currently works as a graduate research assistant with Dr. Reynolds on a project funded by The Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Policy Research Center at Alcorn State University that examines social equity within urban agriculture federal institutions and programs, and additional research activities through the Food and Social Justice Action Research Lab at The New School. His research interests include the revitalization of small to mid-sized towns and deindustrialized regions, the interrelations between cities and their rural hinterlands with regards to shared natural resources, regional metabolism, and the territorialization of planetary boundaries through sufficiency policies.
TAMARRA THOMAS, M.S. CANDIDATE
A current masters student with New York University's Food Studies Program, and 2022 graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Food Studies from The New School, Tamarra Thomas has had an extensive career in food. She was able to use her knowledge and experience to help design and implement the Mobile Teaching Kitchen program for the urban agriculture organization Harlem Grown. While designing the program Thomas integrated each recipe with historic and cultural references. Students learned how to make dishes and what made them healthy. They also learned who created the dish, how that dish connected to their culture. Thomas believes that “the more kids see themselves in healthy food the more likely they are to choose healthy options.” As pastry chef, Chef Thomas oversaw all creative direction and daily operations of the several pastry programs including banquet kitchens, catering kitchens and award-winning restaurants. Chef Thomas also owned and operated her own candy story called Mama Cocoa’s Delights, where she created over 80 different types of chocolates and candies. The candy was so well received that Chef Thomas became an official vendor for the United States Senate. Tamarra’s commitment to her craft has earned her local, state, and national awards. In 2013 she was named winner of the Food Network’s series Sweet Genius. She has also appeared in USA Today, The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and most recently CBS. In 2013 she was honored for her outstanding performance in the hospitality community by the Maryland General Assembly. She is currently working with Dr. Reynolds a project funded by The Socially Disadvantaged Farmers and Ranchers Policy Research Center at Alcorn State University that examines social equity within urban agriculture federal institutions and programs.
PAST TEAM MEMBERS
Mike Harrington, M.S., worked as a key project assistant. He graduated from The New School's Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy with a M.S. in Environmental Policy and Sustainability Management. In 2019 he joined The New School’s Tishman Environment and Design Center as Assistant Director.
Claudia Urdanivia, M.A., started as an intern and then worked as a key project assistant. In 2017 she became a staff member with New York City’s GreenThumb community garden progam.
Eben Fenton, was a project assistant. In 2018 he became a staff member at New York Restoration Project.
Michelle Olivero, worked as a graduate student research assistant. In 2018 she joined New York’s Empire State Development Corporation.
Michaela Doughty, graduate research assistant.
Katherine Nehring, graduate research assistant.
Pauline Zaldonis, graduate research assistant.
Summer Xiu Gong, intern.
Steven McCutcheon-Rubio, graduate research assistant and volunteer.