Researcher Spotlights are Q&As that shine a light on School of Human Ecology faculty members’ unique scholarship and research interests.
Jennifer Gaddis, an associate professor of Civil Society & Community Studies, researches the politics surrounding school meals and how school food systems can be improved at local, state, national and global scales. In her work, Gaddis centers the perspectives of laborers across the food chain, from farmers to school nutrition workers, as well as the “care economy” — the paid and unpaid labor that supports well-being. She is an internationally recognized expert with more than 15 years of experience in school food research.
In 2024, Gaddis was granted $1.5 million by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the first federally funded study of the national K-12 school food service workforce. She is the author of two books: 2024’s Transforming School Food Politics Around the World, co-edited with Sarah A. Robert, and 2019’s The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools. Gaddis serves on the National Farm to School Network advisory board and is an active member of the Wisconsin coalition of Healthy School Meals for All.
How did you become interested in your area of study?
I became interested in public school food programs because they encompass a wide range of issues such as student health and well-being, environmental sustainability and the job conditions of workers across the food chain. The U.S. National School Lunch Program alone serves over 30 million students daily. Each year, the federal government spends over $20 billion on the food, materials and labor involved in this program — so, I think we should use these dollars to support a transition to healthy, fair and sustainable systems that also reflect the cultural values of workers and students.
I started to focus on school food labor when I was working on my dissertation, which originally centered on farm-to-school programs. I realized how important it is to have what I call “community-based culinary capacity,” or the ability to work with raw and minimally processed ingredients in school kitchens. Yet when I looked at the academic literature, no one was really talking about scratch cooking or the relationship between food quality and job quality. This felt like the right path for me to make a contribution and, luckily, I was asked to support a community-based participatory research project with the labor union Unite Here.
This gave me the relevant experience to apply to my current position in Civil Society & Community Studies since the department was looking for applicants who conducted “action-oriented research” and/or used participatory methods — in other words, researchers partnering with community organizations to solve problems. I’ve had a lot of freedom at the School of Human Ecology to grow this scholarship in new directions through collaborations with other faculty, work with the UW–Madison Division of Extension and through my classroom teaching.
What’s your motivation for doing this type of work, and how does it impact human well-being?
I apply a human ecological approach to researching school food programs, which means that I examine the entire food chain. State-sponsored school food programs enlist a diverse range of organizations — including private and public, established and entrepreneurial, for-profit and not-for-profit — which provides an ideal setting for investigating how, and in what ways, public policy can support transitioning to more sustainable food systems.
I believe research has the power to change the world and try to enact this belief through publications such as my first book, The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools (University of California Press, 2019), which moves beyond critique to envision and advocate for new political possibilities.
More recently, my international research examines how school food policy can accelerate transitions to more sustainable systems by leveraging the purchasing power of large-scale public programs and shifting children’s dietary habits.
Are there any common misconceptions about your work?
People often think my work is mostly about improving child nutrition and public health and that I have training in nutrition and dietetics. My doctoral training is actually in environmental studies and my research primarily focuses on the politics and processes of systems change. Given the freedom to not have to “fit” cleanly into one discipline, at the School of Human Ecology I’ve been able to develop a unique interdisciplinary approach that draws from environmental sociology, critical food studies, gender studies, labor studies and community-based research. This leads me to focus on very different things than what a dietician might look at.
One example is the project I’m leading alongside co-principal investigator Margaret Kerr, Feelings about Food, which is a novel study of the role that emotions play in parents’ decision making about school meals. Another is Understanding the School Food Workforce, a $1.5 million national project funded by the USDA.
Who are some individuals who have influenced your work? How do you think about “paying it forward” as you gain experience in your field?
UW–Madison Professors Jane Collins, Nan Enstad and the late Erik Olin Wright have had a huge influence on my career. They were phenomenal mentors and role models for me as a junior scholar. They inspired me to conduct research within the tradition of “emancipatory social science” (Wright, 2007), which focuses on generating knowledge that challenges oppression and creates conditions in which people can thrive. They also encouraged me to make connections between critical food studies, the sociology of care and the feminist political economy, which examines the intersections of gender, economics and power relations. Their influence, coupled with my department’s commitment to community-engaged work, shaped my identity as a researcher, educator and public scholar.
Now as an associate professor, I think about “paying it forward” at the university by supporting graduate students and junior faculty who may be in need of some friendly encouragement or strategic connections to opportunities that will help them come into their own.
What else should the Human Ecology community know about you?
I’ve been interested in home economics (the roots of human ecology!) since I was a graduate student and learned about key figures like Ellen Swallow Richards and Abby Marlatt in a course called Women, Food, and Culture.