Speakers and Attendees

Peggy Barlett, Goodrich C. White Professor of Anthropology at Emory University, is a specialist in agricultural anthropology and sustainability in higher education. As Faculty Liaison to the Office of Sustainability, she has chaired Emory’s Sustainable Food Committee for over a decade, helping it to establish policies for procurement and to create a farmers market, educational garden initiative, and annual sustainable food fair. Emory Dining currently purchases 43% of food served on campus from either sustainably-grown or locally-grown sources, and Emory’s six hospitals purchase 13%. Her work also focuses on the academic challenge of integrating sustainability issues into the curriculum, leading workshops for Emory faculty for nearly 15 years and offering trainings for over 600 campus leaders from around the country. Together with Geoffrey Chase, Barlett has co-edited Sustainability on Campus: Stories and Strategies for Change (MIT Press, 2004) and Sustainability in Higher Education: Stories and Strategies for Transformation (MIT Press, 2013). Past president of the Society for Economic Anthropology, she is author of an award-winning study of the U.S. farm crisis of the 1980s as well as a study of Costa Rican smallholder farmers. She served on the National Research Council Board on Agriculture and Natural Resources and was co-founder of the Atlanta Local Food Initiative. She has worked with groups in Atlanta and across the nation to support the transformation of American culture toward a more sustainable future.