Kimberly Chung

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Associate Professor
Department of Community Sustainability

Ph.D. Stanford University
M.A. Stanford University
M.S. Cornell University
B.S. University of California, Davis

Kimberly Chung holds graduate degrees in foods and nutrition as well as agricultural economics. Her interests lie in the area of food and nutrition security and focus on how we may improve food access and utilization among marginalized populations. As a public scholar, Chung is an advocate of collaborative and participatory approaches to inquiry. Participatory approaches transcend the boundaries among disciplines and between expert and lay ways of knowing. More importantly, they create a means for scholars to engage with, and remain relevant to, the public.

Chung has lived and worked in India, Guatemala, Mexico and Michigan, and is interested in how ordinary people may have more voice in the systems that govern their own food security situation. Her current work includes a Kellogg and CONACYT-funded project that focuses on the use of school gardens as a means to integrate nutrition and agroecological knowledge into the K-12 curriculum in Chiapas, Mexico and a USAID-funded project to examine nutrition-agriculture linkages in gardening projects in Cambodia. In the US she works collaboratively with community partners in food banks, low-income farmers markets, neighborhood centers, and schools.

As an interdisciplinary scholar, Chung is adept at quantitative, qualitative, and participatory approaches to research, and is skilled at crossing disciplinary and professional divides. She has advised the World Bank on the use of qualitative and participatory techniques for research and evaluation as well as state SNAP Ed leaders on how to achieve practical, but rigorous approaches to evaluation by community partners.

At MSU Chung is Chair of the graduate program in the Department of Community Sustainability. Each year she teaches three graduate courses: Foundations of Qualitative Research (ACR 831), Participatory Modes of Inquiry (ACR 838), and Facilitative Leadership (ACR 865). Chung was a core faculty member in the Center for Advanced Study of International Development (CASID) and is a Gender, Justice and Consulting member in the Center for Gender in Global Context (GenCen).