Research Interests

Land Politics in Ecological Movements, Food and Environmental Justice, Urban Agriculture, Critical Political Ecology, Social Ecology, Pedagogies and Curricular Tools for Movements

Biography

Michelle Glowa, PhD is an associate professor in the Anthropology and Social Change department. In her teaching she draws together the learning from land-based and land defense movements that work to cultivate other possible worlds. Michelle approaches her research with over two decades of experience working as a part of environmental and food justice movements in the United States and Mexico.

Her interest in human-nature relations and alternative economic systems has influenced her research perspective which is focused on empowering movement storytelling and the creation of spaces of self-reflection within movements that address reconceptualizations of human relationship to land, ecologies, ownership, and domination, from urban gardens to Indigenous anti-extractivism campaigns. Specifically, she has focused on the dynamics of land access and property rights, shifting land use and development, and the role of both autonomous and third sector organizations in food justice organizing.

Michelle researches and works to produce alternative learning spaces and tools that de-center traditional educational hierarchies and uplift the voices and narratives excluded from dominant pedagogies. Most recently she has worked with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band in their campaign to protect the sacred landscape, Juristac, from a proposed mine, including an effort to develop a curriculum and work to introduce this to local schools. She has also been an active collective member in the Santa Cruz Free Skool project, a grassroots educational project creating opportunities to learn from each other, to foster communities of mutual support, and to grow autonomy.

She received her B.S. in Natural Resource Management and Political Science from Colorado State University and her PhD in Environmental Studies from University of California Santa Cruz in 2014.

Education

B.S. Natural Resource Management and Political Science, Colorado State University

PhD Environmental Studies, University of California Santa Cruz

Courses

Global Social Movements, Living Politics of Water, Alternative Economic Systems, Political Ecology, Integrative Seminar, Activist Skills in Sustainable Food Production, Ethnobotony and Anthropological Approaches to Knowing Plants

Publications

Glowa, K.M. (2022) “A Garden’s Place”. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development.

Glowa, K.M. and Roman-Alcalá, A. (2020) “Diverse Politics, Difficult Contradictions: Gentrification and the San Francisco Urban Agriculture Alliance”. Chapter in edited volume Back to the City: Food and Gentrification in North America Edited by Alison Hope Alkon, Yuki Kato, and Joshua Sbicca. New York University Press

K. Michelle Glowa, Monika Egerer & Vicki Jones (2018) “Agroecologies of displacement: a study of land access, dislocation, and migration in relation to sustainable food production in the Beach Flats Community Garden”, Journal of Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, 43:1, 92-115, DOI: 10.1080/21683565.2018.1515143

Glowa, K.M. (2017) Urban Agriculture, Food Justice and Neoliberal Urbanization: Rebuilding the Institution of Property. Chapter in The New Food Activism: Opposition, Cooperation and Collective Action. UC Press Co-edited by Alison Alkon and Julie Guthman

Academic Advisor and Associate Producer, No Place to Grow: Film by Small Pumpkin Productions, Recipient of Cal Humanities Community Stories Grant

Gray, L., Guzman, P., Glowa, KM., and Thomas, A. (2013) “Can home gardens scale up into movements for social change?: the role of home gardens in providing food security and community change in San Jose, California”. Journal of Local Environment.