Academic work
Food systems are institutionally broken — not technologically broken.
That is the claim my research exists to test. Below: the thesis, the field evidence, the coursework it rests on, and the policy work where it meets a real budget.
Honors thesis · in progress
Neotraditional Food Systems: A Framework for Global Food System Transformation
The argument. Current food systems are fundamentally broken, and an operationally and economically viable alternative already exists. We aren't using it because of institutional and systemic barriers — not because it doesn't work. Those barriers can be identified, quantified, and overcome. A shift in incentive structures toward neotraditional food systems would yield greater quantities of higher-quality food while using land, water, labour, and technology more efficiently.
Who it's for. The thesis is written for the people who make decisions — city council members, foundation officers, policymakers — not only for academics. Food systems scholarship has become good at diagnosing what's wrong. What it rarely does is show what a working alternative looks like operationally and economically. That is the gap this fills.
Structure
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Empirical evidence of institutional dysfunction
Survey and observational research in the Austin Independent School District, showing that institutions normalise and promote harmful food systems — even when the people inside them know better.
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Casa de Luz as operational proof
A case study of a working whole-food, plant-based community dining model, demonstrating that it runs efficiently and sustainably at real scale over decades.
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Economic modelling at three scales
Austin, the United States, and globally — showing that if incentives and budgets shift, neotraditional food systems become not just viable but advantageous.
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What institutional change actually looks like
Subsidy realignment, procurement reform, urban planning integration, and the specific policy shifts that would make this model the default rather than the exception.
Field research
The Paradoxes of Global Food Systems
Evidence from the Austin Independent School District on how food-related frameworks create and reinforce the harm they intend to correct. Surveys of school staff paired with structured observation of the retail food environment around high- and low-income campuses.
- 39 promotions versus 3. Stores within walking distance of a lower-income campus displayed 39 ultra-processed food promotions; the equivalent stores near a higher-income campus displayed three. Same district, same menus, different food environments.
- Identical food, opposite assessments. Staff at lower-income schools rated the very same district-wide menu significantly healthier than staff at higher-income schools. Scarcity reframes what counts as good.
- Knowing is not seeing. Among staff who named ultra-processed food a leading threat to student health, the overwhelming majority still rated their own cafeteria's offerings positively — the gap between abstract knowledge and institutional recognition.
- Seventy-plus ingredients. A district “rice, beans, and chips” lunch — about as simple a plate as an institution can serve — reportedly carries more than seventy ingredients.
Why it matters theoretically
The analysis centres on symbolic misrecognition — Bourdieu's account of how arbitrary or harmful arrangements come to be perceived as natural, legitimate, and inevitable. Applied to food, it explains how meals assembled from subsidised commodity inputs inherit an aura of nutritional adequacy from the agencies that serve them, and why well-intentioned professionals reproduce a system they can accurately criticise in the abstract.
It also complicates the “food desert” framework: current planning metrics reward proximity and availability while ignoring what is actually promoted inside the store. On those metrics, the wealthier and healthier campus scores worse.
Current coursework & research
What I'm reading and writing now
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Fall 2026
Food and World History — LAH 350
How food shaped civilisations, empires, trade routes, and ethical systems across cultures. Final research paper due December 2026.
Relevance: the historical spine underneath a framework that claims to be ancient in practice and novel only as policy. If neotraditional systems are genuinely traditional, the history has to bear that out.
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Summer 2026
The Healthy, Livable City
Research topic: neotraditional food systems as an urban planning imperative. Deliverable: a digital story connecting food systems to livable cities.
Key interview: Gary Bradley, the South Austin developer, on Austin's planning history and the food access failures built into it — a first-hand account of the decisions that produced the city's present food geography.
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Current
City of Austin Food Department — Internship
Building the case that funding a municipal food department is among the best-value decisions available in a city budget.
Working from: the EAT-Lancet Commission, the Austin–Travis County Food Plan, and municipal health data — connecting the theory to actual funding mechanisms and policy levers.
Academic honors & awards
Recognition
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March 2026
Distinguished College Scholar — UT Austin
Awarded for standing in the top 4% of the College of Liberal Arts.
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June 2024
Congress for the New Urbanism — 2024 Merit Award
For representing Casa de Luz and “The New Urban Diet,” a model of communal, organic, unprocessed food as urban policy. I wrote the design proposal, directed a short film, and presented at the CNU awards ceremony in Cincinnati, Ohio.
The submission argued that the Charter of the New Urbanism — the movement's founding document on walkable, sustainable design — has a blind spot where food should be.
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December 2022
Omni Interlocken Case Competition — Winner
Project leader of the winning six-person team on workplace environment and employee retention, selected first out of more than 125 teams and roughly 800 participants. Awarded $1,800.
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2015 & 2017
Eco-Rise Innovation Grants — two-time awardee
Audited campus energy and water use and planned a full LED conversion and rainwater collection system. Secured $5,750 in total grants from the City of Austin Office of Sustainability.
Academic inquiries
For drafts, data, collaboration, peer review, or an invitation to speak on food systems and urbanism — email is the fastest route.