Laurel Bellante, Ph.D., is director of the B.A. in Food Studies and assistant director of the Center for Regional Food Studies (CRFS) at the University of Arizona. She is a human-environment geographer specializing in food justice, global environmental change, sustainable food systems, and agrarian questions in both the United States and Mexico. In her role, Bellante oversees curriculum development and engagement opportunities for the Food Studies degree. She teaches several courses in the area of critical food studies, including “Introduction to Critical Food Studies,” “Food Justice, Ethics, and Activism,” and the senior capstone.

Bellante uses a political ecology approach to connect what is happening in people’s kitchens, farms, and communities to larger political economic and environmental changes occurring regionally, nationally, and globally. She has researched alternative food networks in Mexico, poverty and climate change in the Southwestern U.S., carbon forestry programs in Latin America, and food security and food justice in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. Her most recent research explores corn farmers’ experiences of and responses to neoliberalism and environmental change in Chiapas, Mexico. Ongoing research projects include food waste in the US-Mexico border food system, barriers to new food entrepreneurship in Southern Arizona, and agro-ecological farming networks in Chiapas, Mexico.

Bellante completed her PhD in Geography and Development and her MA in Latin American Studies at the University of Arizona. She also has a BA in Latin American Studies and Environmental Analysis from Pomona College.

Courses Taught

FOOD 101: Introduction to Critical Food Studies
FOOD 300: Food Justice, Ethics, & Activism
FOOD 360: Food Fights: Debates about the Future of Food