Food and Agricultural Policy. Technological change in agriculture. Organic agriculture. Genetically modified organisms (agricultural biotechnology). Rural development; Livestock industry. Anaerobic digesters. Wetland preservation;

Rick Welsh joined the Department of Public Health, Food Studies and Nutrition as a Professor of Food Studies in August, 2012. Welsh is also a faculty member at our Maxwell School. Prior to taking this position he worked at Clarkson University as a Professor of Sociology. Previous positions have included Policy Analyst with the Henry A. Wallace Institute for Alternative Agriculture and the Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program for the Southern Region. He also serves as editor-in-chief for the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems published by Cambridge University Press. His research and teaching focus on social change and development with emphases on agri-food systems, science and technology studies and environmental sociology.

Education

Ph.D. in Development Sociology from Cornell University

Master of Science in Food and Resource Economics from the University of Florida

Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the College of William and Mary

With an extensive portfolio of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and presentations, Bellow’s research interests include food and nutrition systems and economies; linkages between sustainable agriculture, development and livelihoods; human rights and the right to adequate food and nutrition, including food and nutrition security; civil society, social movements, and food sovereignty; community public health; urban-rural food linkages in terms of production for trade and household consumption, migration, nutritional health, biodiversity, food safety, food practices and praxis, cultural integrity and identity, social justice, gender, and children.

Bellows has been recognized for teaching and research excellence, receiving funding support for her work from diverse agencies and foundations including the American Council of Learned Societies, the International Research and Exchanges Board, Open Society Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, U.S. Agency for International Development, Johnson and Johnson Foundation, Robert Bosch Foundation, Foundation fiat panis, Misereor, Heinrich Böll Foundation, and the European Union-supported EcoFair Trade Dialogue Projects.

Previously, Bellows was a University Professor (2007-2012) at Hohenheim University. She also served as the Chair of the Department of Gender and Nutrition and Deputy Director of the Institute for Social Sciences in Agriculture in the Faculty of Agriculture and was the Director of the Research Center for Gender and Nutrition, a think tank for the university.

Her current project explores immigrant farmers’ roles in agrarian change in the United States today. Her book on the topic, “The New American Farmer: Race, Immigration and Sustainability,” was published by MIT Press in 2019. She has also published in journals such as Geoforum, The Journal of Peasant Studies, Food, Culture, and Society, Antipode, Agriculture and Human Values, and Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems, among others. She is presently the chair of the Geographies of Food and Agriculture Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers.