About Dr. Gaddis
Jennifer Gaddis is an Associate Professor of Civil Society and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an expert on school food politics and systems change. As a public scholar, she has written guest essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, USA Today, and Teen Vogue, and appeared on NPR, HBO, and AJ+.
Dr. Gaddis earned a PhD from the Yale School of the Environment in 2014. Her research uses critical feminist and ecological lenses to examine the social, political, and economic organization of daily life, particularly within the context of school- and community-based food systems. As a transdisciplinary and action-oriented scholar, she uses qualitative, quantitative, and participatory research methods to move beyond critique to envision and advocate for a politics of the possible.
Dr. Gaddis brings a care economy and labor-centered perspective to school food politics. Her first book, The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools (University of California Press, 2019), shifted the national conversation about school food by telling the century-long history of the women and communities who created a new form of collective care infrastructure--what we now know as the National School Lunch Program--and showing what is possible when we invest in scratch cooking, local sourcing, and higher quality jobs for school nutrition workers. Her forthcoming book, co-edited with Sarah A. Robert, Transforming School Food Politics Around the World, is an edited collection that brings together scholars, practitioners, and students from nine countries to share creative strategies for pushing policy levers and shifting mindsets, lessons for building inclusive solidarity coalitions, and prefigurative glimpses of school food programs that align with a feminist politics of food and education.
Dr. Gaddis serves on the advisory board of the National Farm to School Network and is an active member of the Healthy School Meals for All (HSM4A) Wisconsin coalition. She and her students regularly partner with school districts, labor unions, and social movement organizations on community-based research and advocacy projects related to food justice in K-12 schools. Current projects include a statewide study of the Wisconsin school nutrition workforce, conducted in collaboration with the HSM4A Wisconsin coalition, research on socially disadvantaged farmers and value-added producers in Wisconsin’s farm-to-school economy, and the Feelings about Food project, which examines parents’ emotions, decisions, and engagement with school meals.
At UW-Madison, Dr. Gaddis teaches courses in the Community and Nonprofit Leadership undergraduate major and the Civil Society and Community Research PhD program. Her teaching has been recognized by multiple school- and campus-level awards for excellence and inclusivity. She regularly teaches courses on community and social change, evaluation and planning, and the human ecology of food and sustainability. Across these courses, Dr. Gaddis trains students to address complex issues through community collaborations, interdisciplinary analyses, and action-oriented scholarship. Whenever possible, she embeds opportunities for students to work on applied projects. In Spring 2020, for example, students in CSCS 375 Human Ecology of Food and Sustainability collaborated with Hunger Task Force to analyze policy language and demographic data from nearly 400 Wisconsin school districts in order to support the Milwaukee-based nonprofit’s campaign to end lunch shaming.
Dr. Gaddis is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies, the Center for Cooperatives, and the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems. She serves on the advisory boards for the Havens-Wright Center for Social Justice and the School for Workers and as the faculty advisor for Slow Food UW. She also serves on the board of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society.
View her complete CV here.
Dr. Gaddis earned a PhD from the Yale School of the Environment in 2014. Her research uses critical feminist and ecological lenses to examine the social, political, and economic organization of daily life, particularly within the context of school- and community-based food systems. As a transdisciplinary and action-oriented scholar, she uses qualitative, quantitative, and participatory research methods to move beyond critique to envision and advocate for a politics of the possible.
Dr. Gaddis brings a care economy and labor-centered perspective to school food politics. Her first book, The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools (University of California Press, 2019), shifted the national conversation about school food by telling the century-long history of the women and communities who created a new form of collective care infrastructure--what we now know as the National School Lunch Program--and showing what is possible when we invest in scratch cooking, local sourcing, and higher quality jobs for school nutrition workers. Her forthcoming book, co-edited with Sarah A. Robert, Transforming School Food Politics Around the World, is an edited collection that brings together scholars, practitioners, and students from nine countries to share creative strategies for pushing policy levers and shifting mindsets, lessons for building inclusive solidarity coalitions, and prefigurative glimpses of school food programs that align with a feminist politics of food and education.
Dr. Gaddis serves on the advisory board of the National Farm to School Network and is an active member of the Healthy School Meals for All (HSM4A) Wisconsin coalition. She and her students regularly partner with school districts, labor unions, and social movement organizations on community-based research and advocacy projects related to food justice in K-12 schools. Current projects include a statewide study of the Wisconsin school nutrition workforce, conducted in collaboration with the HSM4A Wisconsin coalition, research on socially disadvantaged farmers and value-added producers in Wisconsin’s farm-to-school economy, and the Feelings about Food project, which examines parents’ emotions, decisions, and engagement with school meals.
At UW-Madison, Dr. Gaddis teaches courses in the Community and Nonprofit Leadership undergraduate major and the Civil Society and Community Research PhD program. Her teaching has been recognized by multiple school- and campus-level awards for excellence and inclusivity. She regularly teaches courses on community and social change, evaluation and planning, and the human ecology of food and sustainability. Across these courses, Dr. Gaddis trains students to address complex issues through community collaborations, interdisciplinary analyses, and action-oriented scholarship. Whenever possible, she embeds opportunities for students to work on applied projects. In Spring 2020, for example, students in CSCS 375 Human Ecology of Food and Sustainability collaborated with Hunger Task Force to analyze policy language and demographic data from nearly 400 Wisconsin school districts in order to support the Milwaukee-based nonprofit’s campaign to end lunch shaming.
Dr. Gaddis is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies, the Center for Cooperatives, and the Center for Integrated Agricultural Systems. She serves on the advisory boards for the Havens-Wright Center for Social Justice and the School for Workers and as the faculty advisor for Slow Food UW. She also serves on the board of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society.
View her complete CV here.