The ideas and issues explored within the food systems program turn into incredible capstone projects that contribute to our thinking about social justice in the food system and advance the knowledge, skills, and career paths of food system and society graduates, the FSS Capstone projects can also be found in the OHSU Digital Repository.

Sample titles of student work:

• Agency, Mobility, and Food: Developing a Capability Theory for the Food System
• Veganism and Social Justice: Applying a Conceptual Framework of Violence
• Grassroots Filling in the Cracks for Oregon Farmworkers: A Social Justice and Social Movement Analysis of Oregon’s Alianza Poder
• Financialization in the Food System: Issues of Policy and Discourse
• Threat Narratives and Othering: Considering How Narratives about Immigrant Agricultural Workers Contributes to Their Exploitation in the United States
• Commodity Racism, Cultural Appropriation, and the Perpetuation of Oppressive Food DiscourseCollaborative Effort for Systems Change: Views Across the Food Movement
• Food Consulting Confidential: Neoliberalism in Silicon Valley Food and Technology Culture
• Empathy for Justice: A Social Transformation of the US Food System
• Empty Bellies in Fields of Plenty: A review of the U.S. federal food and nutrition programs and rural food insecurity
• The Role Labor Unions and Worker Centers Play in Restaurant Industry Equality
• Kids Deserve the Best We Can Offer: An Analysis of School Lunch
• How Policy and Scientific Research Benefiting the Sugar Industry Unequally Affects Low-Income Americans
• Want Amid Plenty: The Capitalist Paradox of Hunger and Food Waste
• Understanding Democracy: Concepts, practices, and the power of decision-making in the food system
• Looking Through the Kitchen Window: A critical discourse analysis of domestic foodwork research and oppression
• A Discursive Analysis of Culturally Appropriate Food: The conceptualization and contribution to social justice
• The Illusion of Choice in the Grocery Store: Grocery Stores and the Construction of Food Choice
• Nonhuman Animal Rights & Food Sovereignty: Addressing Interspecies Food System Oppression
• City Food, Social Problems: Roles of Urban Agriculture in the U.S.
• A Seat at the Table: An Inquiry into the Treatment of Restaurant Workers and the “High Road” Restaurant Movement
• Agricultural Apprenticeships: Reproducing Traditional Labor Relations in the Alternative Food Movement?
• Toward Dismantling Racial Inequity in the Food System: Exploring Inclusivity Antiracist Practice and Radical Food Justice Principles in the Sustainable Agriculture Movement
• Building Food Sovereignty in the United States: An analysis of Food Movement Approaches to Challenging Power Inequities in the Food System
• The Cycle of Hunger: Are Gender Issues a Primary Cause?
• Not-So-Free Trade Agreements: Discursive Framings of Food Systems Benefits and Burdens around Free Trade Agreements
• Food Justice’s Missing Peace: Confronting Trauma through Peacebuilding in the Agrifood Movement
• The Silent Protein: Navigating the Global Commons from Bait to Plate
• Unsettling settler food movements: An exploration of colonialism, food movements, and decolonization
• An Exploration of Health and Nutrition Programs: Are Underlying Social Issues Recognized?
• Voices and Arms: Women’s Movements and Food Sovereignty
• Fighting the Good Fight: Food Banks as Social Justice Advocates?
• Through the Garden Gate: Examining ‘the Edible and the Equitable’ in Garden-Based Learning Programs
• Building Municipal Food Governance: A new potential for a coordinated and just food system across the country
• More Than Your Nutrition 101: Exploring Systemic Causes of Childhood Obesity
• Voting Rights: How the Fetishization of Organic Compromises Food Justice
• Sustainable’ Food Corporations and Sustainable Food Systems: On the Possibilities of Engagement for Food Systems Change
• How Alternative are the Alternatives? A Conceptual Framework for Analysis of Control and Value Distribution in Alternative Food Networks
• The Beef with Meat: A Review and Analysis of Strategies to Address the Social Injustices of the Industrial Meat System
• Bean in hand, nickel in pocket: The Social Experience and Political Economy of Senior Food Insecurity
• A Food Justice Analysis of Oregon Farm to School and School Garden Network
• Social Justice in Sustainable Food Systems: An Exploratory Analysis of Definitions, Projects, and Funding Frameworks
• Growing Food Banks? Securing the Food Insecurity Network
• Healthy Food on Wheels: An Exploration of Mobile Produce Markets through a Food Justice Lens
• Food Justice and Prison Food Systems: Exploring the Potential for Reframing Prison Food from Punitive to Restorative
• An Exploratory Analysis of Culinary Educators’ Constructs of Gender Equality
• An Analysis of Farm Labor Depiction: Is the Local Food Movement Perpetuating Farmworker Injustice?
• The Curious Silence of Gender Inequity