Andrea Rissing

Andrea Rissing, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist specializing in agriculture and environmental studies. Her research critically examines agricultural practices, data systems, and rural livelihoods in the US and EU. She focuses on how datafication shapes agricultural landscapes, social sustainability in farming communities, and the intersections of policy, environment, and labor.

Key research areas include the political ecology of food systems, the ethics of agricultural data practices, and the socio-economic challenges faced by farm families. Her work bridges ethnographic methods with geospatial analysis to understand complex agricultural trajectories. She has published extensively on topics such as crop diversification, childcare gaps in farm programming, and the cultural narratives surrounding food production.

Rissing’s interdisciplinary approach highlights understudied aspects of farming communities, such as the invisible labor of childcare and the implications of data accessibility for sustainability. Her scholarship challenges conventional frameworks by emphasizing intersectional perspectives on agriculture’s social, environmental, and economic dimensions.