Past Ferguson Family Program in Food Studies Fellows

2025 Fellows

Faith Austin

Faith Austin spent Summer 2025 as a Ferguson Family Food Studies Fellow conducting field research in Cameroon on rural farm-to-market transportation and food security. Partnering with the Institute for Affordable Transportation and UNC Anthropology, she worked alongside smallholder farmers, educators, and government leaders to document how Basic Utility Vehicles reduce post-harvest loss and strengthen local food systems. Through interviews, focus groups, and on-the-ground collaboration across Cameroon’s East, West, and Centre regions, her Ferguson Fellowship bridged research and service—centering farmer voices while contributing to policy discussions, pilot deployments, and a forthcoming short documentary.

 

 

Srinithi Raj

My focus on preventative health and nutrition drives a lot of my work. This summer, I conducted research on how ethno-racial identity (ERI) impacts adolescent decision-making, and I am also studying decision-making in lunchroom environments. As adolescents accumulate and reflect on social experiences at school and beyond, they begin forming more stable interpretive frameworks that guide relationship-building, conflict management, and their position within social groups and identity-based communities. Whether it be through lunchrooms or other key social settings in and outside of school, adolescents are at a unique time in their development where their interactions and understandings of their peers are shaped by several contexts such as their ERI. My project created a model showing how perspective taking abilities could be the mechanistic factor connecting a particularly salient social context, ERI, to prosocial abilities in difficult situations. Especially as someone who would like to become a culturally-committed pediatrician, I chose my research topic because adolescence is an age when youth are frequently subjected to forms of division, and fostering experiences that promote ethnic identity development and perspective-taking may help encourage children to embrace their ethnicity in various ways like celebration and food.