Julia Kavanagh is a fifth year sociology student at the University of Alberta. She will be completing her B.A. Hons degree in the fall of 2020. Julia is interested in food security and food sovereignty, particularly in Africa. She wrote her honors thesis during the 2019-2020 school year, entitled “From Food Insecurity to Food Sovereignty: Postcolonial South Sudan and the Neoliberal Agenda,” supervised by Dr. Sourayan Mookerjea. Julia’s primary interests lie within understanding how neoliberal policies and institutions impact the global food regime. She is critical of the corporatized food system and agribusiness, and devotes much of her time to understanding the ways in which economic and political mechanisms maintain and even encourage global hunger. During the 2019-2020 school year, Julia sat on the Sociology Department Council and Undergraduate Teaching Committee as one of two student representatives. She also served on the Sociology Undergraduate Student’s Association as the Vice President External. Outside of academia, Julia spends her time practicing yoga and studying herbalism.
