Community-Engagement Research and Teaching with Immigrant Farmworkers

In this presentation and discussion, Kathy discusses her experiences with community-engaged research and teaching with immigrant farmworker communities. Engagement with immigrant communities requires significant efforts at building trust, should offer benefit to the participating communities, and necessitates reflexivity about power and privilege in university-community relationships. During the talk, Kathy shares some of the lessons she has learned (sometimes the hard way) from a research project with mushroom farmworkers and from a community-engaged course on a local dairy farm. 

Note: Closed captioning for this video is coming soon in Spring 2023.

Speaker Bio:

Kathy Sexsmith is an Assistant Professor of Rural Sociology at Penn State. Her research program looks broadly at gender and rural development, with both domestic and international areas of focus. In the U.S., she studies how gender, legal status, and geographical isolation shape integration among immigrants working in agricultural industries. In particular, she looks at social networks and transnational ways of life in non-traditional rural immigrant destinations. Her international research examines the gender dynamics of sustainable agriculture initiatives, including voluntary certifications, responsible investment, and climate-smart agricultural programming in the Global South.