Power Up Seminars

September 16 2026

How can we remain resourced, connected, and purposeful amid ecological loss and political uncertainty? Join Jess Serrante '10 and Stephen Posner, for an engaging event exploring how we experience this moment—and how attention, story, and community can sustain meaningful and creative action. Through discussion, collective sense-making and a guided community practice inspired by the work of Joanna Macy, participants will explore how to turn our attention toward the outcomes we want, without negating the dangers we face or bypassing into a naive kind of hope.

Jess Serrante is a ritualist, cultural regeneration facilitator, and leadership coach working at the intersection of grief, imagination, and how we come together to meet the challenges and the extraordinary regenerative potential of these times.

Stephen Posner, PhD, is a senior fellow for planetary health at the Garrison Institute, where his work aims to transform how we understand, value, and care for nature.

Co-presented by the UVM Institute for Agroecology, Leadership for the Ecozoic, Gund Institute for the Environment, Osher Center for Integrative Health, Office of Sustainability, and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources

Event Poster

Dorn Cox:

Building Commons Enabling Infrastructure for Food Sovereignty: Community-Led Examples of Global Knowledge Sharing for Local Production and Autonomy

March 18 2026

Dorn Cox will introduce the agricultural knowledge commons as “enabling infrastructure”—shared tools, data, designs, and governance that let communities adapt and control their own food, knowledge, and local production systems. Grounding the talk in a longer historical arc, he’ll trace how knowledge of seeds, breeds, and technology intersects with open science and has moved from farmer-to-farmer networks and extension-era dissemination to today and tomorrow’s knowledge commons, and what’s been gained, lost, or steadfastly defended along the way. He’ll spotlight contemporary, community-led examples of global knowledge for local production and autonomy—from Farm Hack and GOAT (Gathering for Open Ag Tech) to OpenTEAM and the Grassroots Innovations Assembly for Agroecology (GIAA)—and close with a “power-up” invitation for participants to map commons infrastructure in their own contexts and identify concrete next steps for building greater autonomy together.

Agroecology, Human Rights and Healthy Futures

February 19, 2026

Drawing on experiences from Latin America, the talk presents arguments on how agroecology, as a strategy for restoring health in its various dimensions, contributes to the realization of multiple human rights. 

Agroecology --as the application of ecological and social principles to the design and management of healthy, equitable, and resilient food systems-- it is intrinsically linked to fostering sustainable livelihoods and territories, particularly for those in vulnerable situations and marginalized contexts. Agroecology's ability to achieve this extends beyond fulfilling specific ecological, social, and economic indicators. It revitalizes dignifying socioecological processes related to agriculture, ecosystem management, food, local organization, and agency. Drawing on examples from Latin America, the presentation argues that agroecology is a strategy for realizing human rights in contexts of multiple crises.  

Dr. Georgina Catacora-Vargas is a Bolivian professor, researcher, and policy advisor with Ph.D. in Agroecology. She is a professor of agroecology at the Peasant Academic Unit "Tiahuanacu" of the Catholic University of Bolivia and a Fulbright Scholar in Residence at the Department of the Environment, Ithaca College for the 2025–2026 academic year. She is the current president of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA) and a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food). She is also an advisor to the Agroecology Fund. For over ten years, she advised the National Environmental Competent Authority within Bolivia's Ministry of Environment and Water, as well as other entities within the Bolivian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She negotiated various United Nations agreements and regional treaties on environmental issues and served as a consultant for different UN organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). In 2025, she led the drafting of the Bolivian National Strategy of Agroecology. Her work is transdisciplinary, rooted in participatory action research on socio-ecological systems related to agroecology, biodiversity, and food systems. She also incorporates a gender and human rights approach into her work, particularly regarding women and peasants. Dr. Catacora-Vargas advocates for youth rights and the use of art as a transformative research and pedagogical strategy. 

Agroecological Transformations: Challenges and Possibilities

With Dr. Rachel Bezner Kerr, Cornell University

September 12, 2025

Agroecology as a holistic framework, holds out the promise of just, sustainable and resilient agriculture and food systems of the future, but working to transform agriculture and food systems is an ongoing challenge.  How can such transformations take place? What are the practical dimensions of such transformations? What are the barriers and enabling conditions for agroecological transformations? Dr. Bezner Kerr will examine these questions by drawing from her long-term participatory transdisciplinary research in Malawi, as well as recent research in Senegal and the United States. 

About Rachel Bezner Kerr: Rachel Bezner Kerr is a Professor in Global Development, the Director of the Graduate Field of Development Studies and the Director of the Institute for African Development at Cornell University. She does research in Africa on agroecology, gender, climate change adaptation, biodiversity, food security and nutrition. She was a Coordinating Lead Author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability.  She will be a Lead Author for the upcoming IPCC AR7 report. She was also a contributing author to the UN High Level Panel of Experts 2019 report on Agroecology. 

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Rethinking Weeds: European insights on the shift from conventional to agroecological weed management with Dr. Alexandros Tataridas, Agronomist and Weed Scientist, University of Coimbra, Portugal

April 29, 2025 

Are there alternatives to herbicides for weed management? What exactly is agroecological weed management? In this talk Alexandros Tataridas will explore how weeds can be managed using agroecological principles. Drawing on insights and experiences from across Europe, he will present key findings from the European project Agroecology for Weeds-GOOD. This project brings together a network of 16 Living Labs in nine EU countries, working to reduce herbicide use by promoting sustainable, locally adapted weed management practices rooted in agroecology.

Alexandros Tataridas is an Invited Assistant Researcher at the Centre for Functional Ecology (CFE) at the University of Coimbra (UC) in Portugal. His work focuses on agroecology, the science-policy interface, sustainable crop production and food consumption, as well as agroecological weed management. He was awarded a Fulbright-Schuman Visiting Scholar grant to conduct research at the Institute for Agroecology at the University of Vermont, where he is contributing to transatlantic collaboration and bridges between the U.S. and the European Union in the fields of agroecology and agri-food systems. Dr. Tataridas is a consortium builder & proposal writer, also serving as the scientific project manager of the Horizon Europe project Agroecology for Weeds – GOOD.

Organising Together for Transformation: 
Taking a Social Movement Ecology Approach to the UK Agroecology Movement

March 18, 2025 5:30-7:00pm

Stafford 101, 95 Carrigan Dr Burlington VT 05405

Food system change based on agroecology doesn’t follow a single, technical path. Instead, it takes many different and sometimes messy routes, shaped by the people and communities involved. These transformations rely on dialogue between different ways of knowing and are often led by grassroots action and participatory processes. As such, social movements have long been key drivers of agroecology, but we still know little about how these movements organise—especially in the global North.

In this seminar, I share findings from Resisting, Learning, Growing, a research project exploring how the UK agroecology movement learns, organises, and grows. I look at the tensions within the movement—how it tries to reach beyond its usual networks while holding onto its radical, prefigurative practices. This work builds on the Social Movement Ecology framework developed by grassroots trainers at the Ulex Project and Ayni Institute, alongside insights on coalition-building from early US feminists of colour.

Postcapitalist Community Economies Here and Now:
Sowing the Seeds of Transformative Futures

February 26, 2025

What does reframing the economy as diverse ‘do’? And why is it a necessary step towards transforming the ways of living that are threatening life itself?  In this talk Katherine Gibson will outline the Diverse Economies Research Project and discuss strategies for enacting ethical economies that community economy scholar activists are involved in.   
 
Katherine Gibson is Professor Emerita at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University and was the 2022 Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Visiting Professor of Australian Studies, Harvard University. She is a feminist economic geographer with an international reputation for innovative research on economic transformation and over 30 years’ experience of working with communities to build resilient economies. As J.K. Gibson-Graham, the collective authorial presence she shares with the late Julie Graham (Professor of Geography, University of Massachusetts Amherst), her books include The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy (Blackwell 1996) and A Postcapitalist Politics(University of Minnesota Press, 2006). Her most recent books are Take Back the Economy: An Ethical Guide for Transforming Our Communities, co-authored with Jenny Cameron and Stephen Healy (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), Making Other Worlds Possible: Performing Diverse Economies, co-edited with Gerda Roelvink and Kevin St Martin (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), Manifesto For Living in the Anthropocene, co-edited with Deborah Bird Rose and Ruth Fincher (Punctum Press, 2015) and The Handbook of Diverse Economies (Edward Elgar, 2020) co-edited with Kelly Dombroski. She is a founding member of the Community Economies Collective and Co-Director of the Community Economies Institute.

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Through the Lens of the Lived Experience of "No Recourse to Public Funds":

A Reflection on Collaborative Photovoice Methodologies 

November 13, 2024

The UVM Institute for Agroecology is excited to welcome scholar-activist Jasber Singh Ph.D. to the next edition of our Power Up Speaker Series! Join us in person or virtually to learn more about his work at the Centre for Agroecology, Water & Resilience at Coventry University (UK).⁠
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Jasber has several years of experience designing, delivering and evaluating participatory action research projects on social and environmental justice at the local, national and international level.⁠
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In this seminar, Dr Singh will share his experiences using photovoice methodologies to amplify the impact of participatory research that seeks to advance justice and equity.⁠

Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming

October 23, 2024

Join for a conversation with Liz Carlisle about her recent book, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming. In Healing Grounds, Carlisle shares stories of Indigenous, Black, Latinx, and Asian American farmers who are reviving their ancestors’ methods of growing food—techniques long suppressed by the industrial food system. These farmers are restoring native prairies, nurturing beneficial fungi, and enriching soil health. While feeding their communities and revitalizing cultural ties to land, they are steadily stitching ecosystems back together and repairing the natural carbon cycle. This, Carlisle argues, is the true regenerative agriculture – not merely a set of technical tricks for storing CO2 in the ground, but a holistic approach that values diversity in both plants and people.⁠
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Liz Carlisle is an Associate Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she teaches courses on food and farming. She has written three books about regenerative farming and agroecology: Lentil Underground (2015), Grain by Grain (2019, with co-author Bob Quinn), and most recently, Healing Grounds: Climate, Justice, and the Deep Roots of Regenerative Farming (2022).⁠

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Agroecology and Abolition

April 10, 2024

We are excited to announce an upcoming talk by scholar-activist and collaborator, Maywa Montenegro, as a part of our Power Up Speaker Series! We will get to hear from Maywa about the intersection of agroecology and abolition, based on her paper and mini-book, as well as learn about her family heritage and nonlinear journey into academia.

Towards agroecological futures: Learnings from participatory action research processes in Spain

April 26, 2023

In this seminar, Daniel López will share findings and outcomes from the systematization of agroecological transitions in eight Spanish territories. These cases, in different contexts (rural, urban and city-region) shed light on the processes, challenges and strategies needed to support agroecology transitions. Daniel will also discuss the role of conventional farmers within agroecological transitions.

Where does agroecology rely on a colonial nutrition discourse and how can we disrupt this in ways that advance health equity?

April 5, 2023

In this seminar, dietitian Lucy Aphramor will revisit public health nutrition messages to show how these embed an ableist, healthist, neoliberal ideology. Centering work by scholars that highlights anti-Blackness as co-constituted with anti-fatness, we will explore ways to surface and disrupt the deep logic of coloniality locked in place by public health nutrition to develop a liberatory nutrition narrative that aligns with agroecological transition.