Our research and goals

Led by Dr. Patrick Baur at the University of Rhode Island, our lab group focuses on interdisciplinary agricultural and food systems research that centers the lived experience of the people and places who produce food. We study how people collectively navigate the complex dynamics of ecological sustainability, community development, economic production, and human health.

Lab members blend heterogeneous disciplines including public policy, science and technology studies (STS), political ecology, rural sociology, social-ecological systems, and environmental studies. We examine the ways in which policy mechanisms and other governing institutions intersect with environmental feedback dynamics to affect different kinds of food producers and places differently, with particular attention to scale, agroecological (ecologically diversified) practices, market channels, and lifeworlds. Our research projects document practitioner perspectives and experiences in navigating the competing demands on food production. Our aim is to learn from the strategies and tools that practitioners use to navigate this landscape, and to identify research, policy, and outreach opportunities to better support sustainable food production that benefits both people and planet.