Nils McCune is a research associate at the Institute for Agroecology. He brings experience working within popular movements to transform society and promote peace with justice, in the United States and several other countries. Combining community organizing, participatory action research and political education, his work spans agroecological transitions, climate justice, social movements, youth organizing, pedagogy, journalism, public policy and popular economics, based on a commitment to building food sovereignty through agroecology and human rights. He is a contributor to The Grey Zone and New Internationalist, and he has been a featured guest on Pacifica Radio and Telesur. 

His approach to studying how people transform their realities at the same time as they transform themselves has been shaped by long-term participation in La Vía Campesina, first as part of a technical team supporting grassroots agroecological-political education, and later as regional technical staff for La Vía Campesina of North America. He has given guest lectures at the University of California, the University of Oregon, Stanford University, the University of Maryland, and the University of Vermont. He is a founding member of the Grupo de Masificación de la Agroecología of El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR), in Chiapas, Mexico, and carried out post-doctoral research at the University of Michigan on peasant economies in Puerto Rico.

Nils currently serves on the team of Agroecology Support to the Global Collaborative for Resilient Food Systems (CRFS), where he is co-facilitating an international short course on Agroecological Transitions. He also serves on the board of directors of the California organization Agroecology Commons as well as the editorial board of the Journal of Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems, is a member of the Latin American Scientific Society of Agroecology (SOCLA) and the Working Group on Political Agroecology of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO).