Submitted by Kathryn Teigen ... on
Farmers and ranchers are on the front lines of contemporary crises like climate change. Experienced as shocks like severe weather events and stressors like ongoing drought, climate change impacts exacerbate the challenges that farmers already face – like unequal market access and one-size-fits all policies - that disproportionately burden small and mid-size farmers and increase inequities in agricultural communities. How agricultural communities respond to climate impacts will have broad impacts on our public health, economy, and environment. This research asks how family farmers and ranchers in a northeastern California are impacted by and responding to ecological and policy changes associated with climate change.
We seek an undergraduate research assistant to analyze recent archival materials like local newspaper articles and Facebook posts around key conservation policy events experienced as crisis by this farming community – mostly related to the listing of several endangered species, the associated water-related restrictions on farm management, and the community response and conflict around these events. In addition, the URAP student would help re-code some qualitative material like fieldnotes and interview transcripts for relevant themes to confirm coding accuracy of the primary researcher, as well as assist with literature review and bibliography creation. The URAP project presents one component of a larger research program examining issues of rural/urban divide, cultural change in working landscapes, and the political ecology of climate change. This discourse analysis component is envisioned as a complement to research currently pursued by Dr. Kathryn De Master.
Learning outcomes: The undergraduate researcher can expect to gain skills and experience in research topics and methods in the fields of rural sociology, political ecology, conservation biology, and public policy. The student may have the opportunity to become involved with other aspects of the research project as it develops and may also have the opportunity to collaborate toward the production of analytical reviews and research articles.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Margiana Petersen-Rockney, PhD Candidate and National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow.
The research assistant will be expected to:
Identify, gather, and organize public materials related to specific key crisis events including: local newspaper articles, public county documents and Board of Supervisor meeting minutes, local agriculture group Facebook and website posts, and public agency reports.
With the guidance of the doctoral researchers and faculty mentor, identify key themes and assess community responses to these crisis events.
Identify key relevant academic articles and contribute to a bibliography of related references.
Qualifications: The ideal candidate would be comfortable with remote and online research methods (required), the standard research software suite (spreadsheets, word processing, etc.) (required); have taken coursework in agrifood systems (preferred); have familiarity with qualitative coding software programs such as MaxQDA (preferred but not required); and have a keen interest in agrifood systems, rural community livelihoods, and conservation in working landscapes.