Jennifer Sowerwine

Jennifer Sowerwine serves as an Associate Cooperative Extension Specialist in the Department of Society and Environment within UC Berkeley's College of Letters and Science, where she bridges academic research with community-driven food system transformation. Her work centers on co-producing knowledge with tribal, immigrant, and urban communities to advance food sovereignty and ecological resilience.

Education

• Ph.D. in Wildland Resource Science, University of California, Berkeley
• B.A. in Geography/Ecosystems, University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Sowerwine's research pioneers culturally grounded approaches to food system equity, focusing on tribal health sovereignty, urban agriculture viability, and support for historically marginalized farmers. She employs participatory methodologies to develop community-led solutions for metropolitan food deserts, agricultural policy reform, and culturally relevant food safety protocols, emphasizing youth leadership and biocultural diversity preservation across California's food landscapes.

Her extensive publication record reveals consistent interdisciplinary focus on Indigenous food sovereignty (particularly Klamath Basin tribes), urban-rural food system linkages, and the political ecology of minority farming. Recent work increasingly integrates cannabis sovereignty frameworks and climate-resilient agroecology, demonstrating evolving engagement with legal barriers to metropolitan agriculture and tribal land stewardship.

Awards

• Social Science Research Council-IDRF Fellowship
• Fulbright-Hayes DDRA Fellowship
• Fulbright-IIE

Dr. Sowerwine directs multiple USDA-funded initiatives including the Karuk Agroecosystem Resilience Initiative (xúus nu'éethti) and the Bay Area Regional Food System project, while mentoring youth through tribal citizen science programs. Her grant portfolio spans cannabis sovereignty research (CA Bureau of Cannabis Control), urban farming innovation (Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research), and beginning farmer development (USDA).

She leads the Gill Tract community-university partnership and collaborates with Karuk, Yurok, and Klamath tribal nations through the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Network, developing culturally specific curricula for urban farms and tribal food enterprises while challenging regulatory barriers to small-scale agriculture.