Lia Kelinsky-Jones, (PhD, Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education, Virginia Tech ’21) is an interdisciplinary social scientist interested in questions around the roles of power, participation, and university praxis in the development of more sustainable and just communities and food systems. As a Civic Science Fellow, Lia is investigating university-community policy engagement around climate change.
Her dissertation examined the impacts of federal policy on land grant international development praxis with regards to participation, epistemological inclusion, and a sustainable agriculture approach called agroecology. This work directly fed into her leadership of a university-community policy project to develop a more climate-resilient food system in the Appalachian region of Virginia. She has over a decade of experience in project and program management at Virginia Tech working to extend the expertise of the university to the benefit of communities both locally and globally.
Personally, she grew up in five different countries and speaks both Spanish and French. She is an avid gardener of both food and flowers and enjoys road and mountain biking in her spare time