Pronouns: they/them
I completed my doctorate in May 2025 in the division of Society and Environment in the department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management at the University of California, Berkeley. My PhD advisor was Alastair Iles and I was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow in Sociology. I conducted a mixed methods in-depth case study of the University of California (UC) Berkeley College of Natural Resources (CNR) to investigate how one Historically White Land Grant University envisions and enacts—and inhibits—organizational change to advance anti-racism and decolonization in their agricultural education. I draw on critical and abolitionist university studies as an overarching framework, and also employ an interdisciplinary mix of critical theories that address racism and colonialism; organizational theories on inequality and change-making; and critical pedagogy of agri-food systems. My dissertation research design includes: (a) 129 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 75 individual CNR faculty, staff, students, postdoctoral scholars, and administrators; (b) interviewee identity surveys; (c) content analysis analysis of organizational artifacts; (d) critical visual examination of agricultural teaching and research spaces; and (e) critical reflexivity and critical autoethnographic practices. My dissertation consists of four substudies that each examine different levels and processes for envisioning, enacting, and contesting organizational change:
Study 1, “The First Morrill Act and Its Afterlife: Settler Conquest, White Supremacy, and the Founding of the University of California Agricultural Education,” examines the development of agricultural settler conquest and white supremacy from the beginning of the U.S. occupation of California in 1846 through the first six decades of the UC College of Agriculture. Across two chapters I analyze archival texts, secondary sources, and physical spaces to uncover CNR’s historically-specific development and entrenchment of racist and settler colonial ideologies/ institutions.
Study 2, “The 2020 Racial Justice Movement and Organizational Change Possibilities in the College of Natural Resources,” provides an “ecosystem view” of ideas, discourse, and perceptions of change circulating in CNR in the 2020 context through two semi-longitudinal interviews with 45 agricultural scholars and administrators with different professional positions and personal identities.
Studies 3 and 4 investigate two interventions within CNR to understand how actors mobilize change practices and counter-hegemonic discourse to try to enact anti-racism and decolonization. Study 3, “The Campus Foodscape as Praxis: Participatory Mapping, Pedagogy, and Organizational Change,” examines the six-year UC Berkeley Foodscape Mapping Project, which used the campus as a living laboratory for members to generate agri-food systems knowledge while developing programs, campaigns, and cartographic resources to advance equity. Across three chapters I analyze the ways in which a multi-year organizational change project that used pedagogical and research practices aimed at participatory, student-led learning experiences worked, and not, and what this reveals about change-making processes in CNR.
Study 4, “The ‘Critical Engagements in Anti-Racist Environmental Scholarship’ Course as a Site of Organizational Change,” investigates a course developed by doctoral students during the national racial justice protests of 2020 for members of CNR’s largest department to engage in collaborative learning to deepen understandings of anti-racism in academia, and through action projects, attempt to change departmental structures and culture. The course was distinctive in that it was a learning environment that aimed to flatten traditional academic hierarchies: graduate students, faculty, staff, and postdoctoral scholars took the class together, and the teaching team consisted of doctoral students. I examine how the course cultivated an undertheorized relational and affective aspect of organizational change work which I call “feeling of community.”
I started the PhD after a long year career in food movement nonprofit work and service to the University of California. I began my UC career in 2008, and served as educational program manager at the Berkeley Food Institute from 2014–2022, pursuing the first three years of doctoral work as a concurrent staff member. At BFI I played an integral role in the development of the Food Systems Minor and Graduate Certificate in Food Systems, and led the six year UC Berkeley Foodscape Mapping Project. In 2018 I co-founded the Staff Basic Needs Working Group, which provides food, housing, and economic resources for UC Berkeley employees. In 2021 I co-founded the HBCU-Berkeley Environmental Scholars for Change program to facilitate multidirectional learning among Spelman College, Tuskegee University, and UC Berkeley students and faculty while fostering preparedness and belonging for HBCU students interested in graduate school at Berkeley. I am currently a postdoctoral scholar with the Environmental Scholars for Change program.
I also spend a lot of time thinking about visual culture and queer popular music. My first academic publication was on Bruce Springsteen’s queer musical aesthetic. For more on my visual art life, explore here.
Peer-Reviewed Publications
Fanshel, R. Z., & Iles, A. (in production). Campus foodscape mapping as justice-oriented organizational change. In M. Classens, N. Spiegelaar, & M. Lawler (Eds.), Hungry for change: How postsecondary campuses are transforming food systems. University of Toronto Press.
[Co-first author] Mgbara, W., Fanshel, R. Z., Esquivel, K., Shannon, N., Parker-Shames, P., Elias, D. O., Washington, L., & Guzman, A. (2024). Cultivating anti-racism in the classroom and beyond through collaborative learning in the environmental sciences. Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13412-024-00995-1
Fanshel, R. Z. (2023). “To rescue for human society the native values of rural life”: Race, space, and whiteness in the University of California, Berkeley’s agricultural complex. Whiteness and Education, 9(2), 177–198. https://doi.org/10.1080/23793406.2023.2213234
Fanshel, R. Z., & Iles, A. (2022). Mapping inequity: The campus foodscape as pedagogy and practice. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 6. https://www.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fsufs.2022.759076
Fanshel, R. Z., & Iles, A. (2020). Transforming the campus foodscape through participatory mapping. Case Studies in the Environment, 4 (1120325). https://doi.org/10.1525/cse.2020.1120325. Download the PDF here.
Fanshel, R. Z. (2013). Beyond blood brothers: Queer Bruce Springsteen. Popular Music, 32(3), 359–383. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261143013000275
Other Publications
Blonder, B., Bowles, T., De Master, K., Fanshel, R. Z., Girotto, M., Kahn, A., Keenan, T., Mascarenhas, M., Mgbara, W., Pickett, S., Potts, M., & Rodriguez, M. (2022). Advancing inclusion and anti-racism in the college classroom: A rubric and resource guide for instructors. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5874656
[Lead author] Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues & Native American Student Development. (2021). The University of California land grab: A legacy of profit from Indigenous land—A report of key learnings and recommendations. University of California, Berkeley. https://uclandgrab.berkeley.edu/
Fanshel, R. Z. (2021). The Morrill Act as racial contract: Settler colonialism and U.S. higher education. UC Berkeley: Center for Research on Native American Issues. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1cc0c4tw#author
Fanshel, R. Z. (2021). The land in land-grant: Unearthing Indigenous dispossession in the founding of the University of California. UC Berkeley: Center for Research on Native American Issues. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7kx7k25f#author
Fanshel, R. Z. (2019, May 16). Designing the future of Berkeley’s beverage service. Berkeley Food Institute. https://food.berkeley.edu/from-the-field/designing-the-future-of-berkeleys-beverage-service/
Fanshel, R. Z. (2018, October 16). On the ground with graduate students in extension. Berkeley Food Institute. https://food.berkeley.edu/from-the-field/on-the-ground-with-graduate-students-in-extension/
Fanshel, R. Z., & Iles, A. (2018, August 20). Building equitable and inclusive food systems at UC Berkeley: The Foodscape Mapping Project. Othering & Belonging Institute. https://belonging.berkeley.edu/foodscape-map
Fanshel, R. Z., & Iles, A. (2018, May 4). Op-ed: How we built up a more fair UC Berkeley food system. The Daily Californian. https://www.dailycal.org/2018/05/03/building-fair-campus-food-system/
Fanshel, R. Z., Iles, A., & Prier, M. (2018). Building equitable and inclusive food systems at UC Berkeley: Foodscape Mapping Project report. Berkeley Food Institute. https://food.berkeley.edu/report/building-equitable-and-inclusive-food-systems-at-uc-berkeley/
Teaching
Critical Engagements in Anti-Racist Environmental Scholarship: A Deeper Dive. Co-developed the syllabus and co-taught the course as part of a collective of five graduate students. Graduate and faculty seminar in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley, Spring 2023.
Critical Engagements in Anti-Racist Environmental Scholarship. Co-developed the syllabus and co-taught the course as part of a collective of five graduate students. Graduate, postdoc, staff, and faculty seminar in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley, Fall 2020. Access to course syllabus.
Healthy Campus Food and Beverages Case Design. Developed the syllabus and taught the course. Undergraduate and graduate seminar cross-listed in Public Health and Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC Berkeley, Fall 2019.