Natasha Shannon

My work focuses on agricultural strategies of rural development in Central Appalachia, particularly how these strategies interact with historical and continuing legacies of social exclusion and economic and environmental extraction.

As both a graduate student and a daughter of small-scale regenerative farmers in Appalachia, I think a great deal about rural and agricultural livelihoods, relationships to land and place, and the connections between community well-being and just, equitable, resilient agrifood systems.

Admittance Semester/Year and Program 

Fall 2020, PhD in Society & Environment

Education 

BA, Anthropology (honors) and Arabic Studies, University of Richmond, Richmond, VA, 2018

Research Lab 

Research in Agriculture (Kathryn) De Master (RAD) Lab 

Critical Ruralities Lab (Youjin Chung)

Land Lab (Nancy Peluso)

Selected Publications

• Mgbara, W., R. Fanshel, K. Esquivel, Natasha Shannon, P. Parker-Shames, D. Elias, L. Washington, and A. Guzman. 2024. “Cultivating Anti-Racism in the Classroom and beyond through Collaborative Learning in the Environmental Sciences.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 15 (1): 199–216. doi.org/10.1007/s13412-024-00995-1

• Ransom, E., Bain, C., Bal, H., and Natasha Shannon. 2017 “Cattle as Technological Interventions: Gender Effects of Water Demand in Dairy Production in Uganda.” FACETS 2(2): 715-732. doi.org/10.1139/facets-2017-0031

Selected Presentations 

• “Whose food futures? Power, Place, and Justice in Competing Visions of Agrifood Transformation,” 2026 conference presentation, 2026 Annual Meeting of American Association of Geographers, San Francisco, California

• “Configuring an Agricultural Appalachia: Agrarian Rural Development in Central Appalachia from 1960s-present,” 2025 conference presentation, 87th Annual Meeting of Rural Sociological Society, Salt Lake City, Utah

Selected Honors and Awards

• Graduate Fellow, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (2026-2027)

• Certificate of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (2026)

• Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (2026)

• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (2022)

• Graduate Student Inclusivity Certificate (2022)