PhD Student, Society and Environment
PhD Student, Society and Environment
I am broadly interested in the processes through which Historically White Land-Grant Universities envision, design, and enact—and inhibit—institutional change to improve justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) outcomes in their agri-food systems education. My PhD advisor is Alastair Iles and I am a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. Currently I am exploring the following threads in my doctoral work:
• Historically White Land-Grant Universities and Indigenous land dispossession: The Morrill Act of 1862, which created the U.S. land-grant university system, applied settler-colonial epistemology to powerfully intertwine the expansion of private property with public education by selling nearly 11 million acres of Indigenous land to establish state university endowments. I am examining how the founding of the University of California is intricately tied to the development of racialized agriculture and California’s unique history of dispossession and genocide of Native peoples, and how data on the land sales that funded UC’s endowment might serve efforts by Indigenous communities to rematriate land, obtain reparations from the State, and decolonize the University. In 2020 I co-organized a workshop on the University of California Land-Grab: A Legacy of Profit from Indigenous Land. Read a report on key learnings and recommendations from the conference here.
* ESPM 290: Critical Engagements in Anti-Racist Environmental Scholarship: In 2020, five graduate students (including me) developed and co-taught a course on anti-racist praxis within environmental sciences aimed at changing our department culture through collective learning and concrete interventions. The course was held again in 2021. ESPM 290 is unique in that it is a semester-long, concentrated effort in a learning environment where traditional academic hierarchies are flattened: graduate students, faculty, cooperative extension specialists, staff, and postdocs all are learning together, and the teaching team consists of doctoral students. Thus, it has the potential to advance JEDI in ways that other shorter term and/or population-specific efforts might not. I am conducting interviews with participants in the 2020 and 2021 courses to understand what meanings they are making about anti-racism and how the course might support participants in working toward institutional change.
• UC Berkeley organizational change: In the context of the 2020 nationwide call for racial justice, I am conducting interviews and participant observation to learn how agri-food systems scholars in the UC Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources (Berkeley’s land-grant arm) approach JEDI issues in the college. This study is part of a larger project to understand land-grant organizational change in action.
• Race, Space, and Whiteness in UC Berkeley’s Agricultural Complex: I am writing about UC Berkeley’s Hilgard Hall as a text of whiteness to explore how an academic building dedicated to agricultural research and education renders racial power relations. An article entitled "‘To rescue for human society the native values of rural life’: Race, space, and whiteness in the University of California, Berkeley’s Agricultural Complex” is currently under review.
I began the PhD after a 20-year career in food movement nonprofit work and service to the University of California. I served as program manager at the Berkeley Food Institute from 2014–2o22, pursuing the first three years of doctoral work as a concurrent staff member. At BFI I played an integral role in the development of the Food Systems Minor and Graduate Certificate in Food Systems, and am lead researcher for the UC Berkeley Foodscape Mapping Project. In 2018 I cofounded the Staff Basic Needs Working Group, which provides food, housing, and economic resources for UC Berkeley employees.
I also spend a lot of time thinking about visual culture and queer popular music. My first academic publication was on Bruce Springsteen’s queer musical aesthetic. For more on my visual art life, see my personal website.
Doctorate in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management. University of California, Berkeley. Begun August 2019.
Bachelor of Arts in East Asian Studies (Japanese Studies Concentration). Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, 2000. Senior Thesis: “Homegrown Organic: The Japanese Natural Farming Movement.”
Critical university studies, agri-food systems, critical race theory and whiteness studies, organizational change
Peer-reviewed Publications
Fanshel, R. Z., & Iles, A. (2022). Mapping Inequity: The Campus Foodscape as Pedagogy and Practice. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems 6. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fsufs.2022.759076
Fanshel, Rosalie Z., and Alastair Iles. 2020. “Transforming the Campus Foodscape Through Participatory Mapping.” Case Studies in the Environment 4 (1120325). Download the pdf here.
Fanshel, Rosalie Z. 2013. “Beyond Blood Brothers: Queer Bruce Springsteen.” Popular Music 32 (3): 359–83. Download the pdf here.
Other Publications
[Lead author] Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues & Native American Student Development. (2021). The University of California Land Grab: A Legacy of Profit from Indigenous Land—A Report of Key Learnings and Recommendations. University of California, Berkeley.
Fanshel, R. Z. (2021). The Morrill Act as Racial Contract: Settler Colonialism and U.S. Higher Education. UC Berkeley: Center for Research on Native American Issues.
Fanshel, R. Z. (2021). The Land in Land-grant: Unearthing Indigenous Dispossession in the Founding of the University of California. UC Berkeley: Center for Research on Native American Issues.
Fanshel, Rosalie Z. 2019. Designing the Future of Berkeley’s Beverage Service. Berkeley Food Institute (blog). May 16, 2019.
Fanshel, Rosalie Z. 2018. On the Ground with Graduate Students in Extension. Berkeley Food Institute (blog). October 16, 2018.
Fanshel, Rosalie Z. and Alastair Iles. 2018. Building Equitable and Inclusive Food Systems at UC Berkeley: The Foodscape Mapping Project. Othering and Belonging Institute (blog). August 20, 2018.
Fanshel, Rosalie Z., and Alastair Iles. 2018. Op-Ed | How We Built up a More Fair UC Berkeley Food System. The Daily Californian, May 4, 2018.
Fanshel, Rosalie Z., Alastair T. Iles, and Meg Prier. 2018. Building Equitable and Inclusive Food Systems at UC Berkeley: Foodscape Mapping Project Report. White Paper. Berkeley Food Institute.
Fellowships and Grants
National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. 2021.
UC Berkeley Graduate Division Mentored Research Award. 2020.
UC Berkeley Institute of International Studies Pre-Dissertation Research Grant. 2020.
UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Starter Grant. 2020.
UC Berkeley STEM*FYI Travel Grant. 2020.
UC Berkeley Student Technology Fund Grant. 2019.
UC Berkeley Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management Student Fellowship. 2019.
UC Berkeley Othering and Belonging Institute Research Grant. 2019.
Honors
“On Equal Terms” Unsung Staff Heroines of UC Berkeley Honoree. 2020.
Ford Foundation. Predoctoral Fellowship Honorable Mention. 2020.
UC Berkeley Staff Achievement Award. 2015.
Critical Engagements in Anti-Racist Environmental Scholarship. Co-developed the syllabus and co-taught. Graduate and faculty seminar in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley, Fall 2020.
Healthy Campus Food and Beverages Case Design. Developed the syllabus and taught. Undergraduate and graduate mixed interdisciplinary seminar cross-listed in Public Health and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley, Fall 2019.
Building Equitable and Inclusive Food Systems at UC Berkeley: Foodcape Mapping Project. Research mentor for 30 UC Berkeley undergraduate, masters, and PhD students via paid fellowships, Sponsored Projects for Undergraduate Research (SPUR), and Undergraduate Research Apprentice Program (URAP). 2015 – 2020.
Contact details
Rosalie Zdzienicka Fanshel
UC Berkeley
130 Mulford Hall #3114
Berkeley, CA 94720