Lab Director

Joshua Sbicca, Ph.D., is an educator, community builder, and scholar. He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. He is the author of Food Justice Now!: Deeping the Roots of Social Struggle and a co-editor of A Recipe for Gentrification: Food, Power, and Resistance in the City. 

Becca Chalit-Hernandez is a PhD Student in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. Her research focuses on food systems and carceral systems, as well as discourse and social movements. Through these foci, she has studied migrant farmworker labor organizing, and hunger strikes in immigrant detention. Her current work also includes a study of news coverage of hunger strikes in prisons and detention centers in the United States.

Evan Hazelett is a PhD Student in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto. He has a Master in Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design with a thesis on nonprofit prison garden programs. After graduating in 2020, he began working for the Berkeley Food Network, first running their on-site pantry, then working as their Research & Advocacy Manager. His current PhD research plans are to study agrifood systems, racial capitalism, and (urban) political ecologies/economies.

Azmal Hossan is a PhD student in Sociology and National Research Trainee in Interdisciplinary Training, Education and Research in Food-Energy-Water Systems at Colorado State University. He studies the human dimensions of global climate change, food-energy-water nexus, and environmental justice. He is also an Agent of Change in Environmental Health Fellow at Milken Institute School of Public Health at The George Washington University and is involved in projects through SESYNC, the Urban Resiliency to Extreme Sustainability Research Network and the Community of Practice program at South Central Climate Adaptation Science Center.  

Julia Kovacs, received her MA from the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. She works as a freelance social science researcher based in London. Julia helped build this website and the Growing Chains story map. Her research centers environmental justice, green criminology, and social movements.

Kristin Karashinski is an undergraduate student studying Ecosystem Science and Sustainability and an intern with the Geospatial Centroid at Colorado State University. She is passionate about geospatial information systems, cartography, and the power of spatial storytelling, where she has helped support the development of the Growing Chains story map.

Cliona Johnson is an undergraduate student majoring in Sociology and minoring in Sustainable Water and Information Science and Technology at Colorado State University. She has led the design and contributed illustrations to the zine, Abolitionist Methodologies.

Rebecca Whitten is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. She helped collect and organize a nationwide dataset on commercial prison agriculture records and also worked on data visualization.

Beau Wood is an MA student in the Department of Geography at Colorado State University. His research centers on understanding processes of racialization and gendering in Prison Agriculture and community activism & organizing in response.

Veronica Rogers graduated from Colorado State University with a BA in Sociology and a minor in Global Environmental Sustainability. She helped examine the intersections between environmental justice, gendered racial capitalism, and prison abolition for a project about women farming in prison. She is passionate about social and environmental justice and creating more equitable communities. 

Julianna Weege graduated from Colorado State University in 2024 with a BA in Anthropology and a Global Environmental Sustainability minor. She gathered case studies of agricultural practices in women’s prisons. 

Meadhbh (Maeve) is an MSW/MPH candidate at Colorado State University. She is passionate about public education and the role of systems in shaping individual and collective well-being. Meadhbh works as a therapist apprentice for Kind Therapy Inc and as an assistant for a health and education consulting firm. Outside of work, Maeve spends a lot of time reading, listening to podcasts, and sewing wool hats for friends and family. 

Parker Arnold is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. He helped collect and organize a nationwide data set on prison agriculture.

Adelynn Hetfield graduated from Colorado State University with a degree in Sociology and minor in Philosophy. They helped collect and organize a nationwide data set on prison agriculture.

Micaela Truslove is a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. She helped collect and organize a nationwide data set on prison agriculture. She also offered data linkage support.

Tim Jansury was a graduate student in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University. He built out the satellite image gallery.

Carolyn Rude is an undergraduate student majoring in Geography at Colorado State University. She contributed illustration to the zine, Abolition Methodologies.