Tommy Bleasdale Ph.D. has published academic papers and popular articles about food justice movements and urban agriculture in Phoenix, Arizona. Working closely with practitioners over the last seven years, he has both observed and taken part in multiple aspects of local food system establishment, from gardening to policy creation.

Dr. Bleasdale is an active participant in many local food movements. He helps shape urban and just community-based food systems using the best information available. By fusing the knowledge of academia with the experience of practitioners he crafts material to meet the needs of a community.

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ACADEMIC WORK: CONTEMPORARY WORK: SUMMARY

My contemporary academic work was ambitious and addressed multiple topics. Most broadly, I examined food-based social movements in the US. I then focused on food justice movements in food deserts of Phoenix, Arizona. I described the strategies around healthy food acquisition when living in an urban food desert from the perspective of 53 residential interviews. I analyzed how food justice movements operate day-to-day based upon interviews with food justice practitioners and hundreds of hours of participant observation in gardens and meetings held by those practitioners. Finally, I explained how food justice groups work with other food-based social movements in Phoenix, and how they interact with city governance and overcome policy barriers.