Board Members

Chair

Kristen Lowitt, Queen’s University

Kristen Lowitt is Assistant Professor in the School of Environmental Studies at Queen’s University. Her community-based research focuses on the relationships between natural resource governance and food security in rural and coastal contexts.

Vice-Chair

Russell C. Hedberg II, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania

Russell is an Assistant professor in the department of Geography & Earth Science at Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. As an environmental geographer and agroecologist, he has broad research and teaching interests in how humans and non-humans interact to shape complex systems. Russell’s current research examines sustainable phosphorus management, food system localization, and the social-ecological impacts of novel protein technologies

Secretary-Treasurer

Stefan Norgaard, PhD student, Columbia University;

Stefan Norgaard is the Secretary-Treasurer for the GFASG (2022–2024). He is a PhD Student in Urban Planning at Columbia University. His research looks at integrated territorial planning schemes across supposedly ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ geographies, and recent research published in the journal Food Studies has focused on Specialized Agrarian Industrial Districts (SAIDS). Stefan has also written on avocado production clusters in Michoacán, México.

Faculty Board Members at Large

Abdullah al Mamun, University of Rajshahi in Bangladesh
Katherine Nelson, Kansas State University

FJSAAS Liason

Jessica Gilbert-Overland, SUNY Geneseo

Student Board Members at Large

Anaya Hall, University of California, Berkeley
Dylan Turner, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

Newsletter Editor

Bryan Collins, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

Website Coordinator

James Buratti, The University of Texas at Austin

James works at the University of Texas at Austin as the senior digital strategy manager for Financial and Administrative Services. Prior to that James was university webmaster at Texas State University for 14 years where he also received his PhD in environmental geography. His research focus is on neolocalism and modeling the local food movement, fermented landscapes (specifically cider), and small producers. James was secretary for the Texas Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association and is small food producer. He and his wife raise registered miniature Cheviot sheep and mini-donkeys on a 5th generation family farm in Granger, Texas.