Ellen Platts, Ph.D. student, was awarded the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDRIG) for the project, "Food Security, Heritage, and Sustainability in Urban Contexts" to support her dissertation research. 

Through an ethnography of the UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy initiative in Tucson, Arizona, Ellen's project examines how communities dealing with economic, ecological, and social stressors use their cultural heritage related to food in their struggles for justice. Simultaneously, it explores how sustainable development initiatives authorized by municipal governments also capitalize on this heritage, and how the politics of sustainability are negotiated in divergent plans for the future based on different conceptions for the past.

Congratulations, Ellen!