Joshua Lohnes is a broadly trained human geographer well versed in theories of development, political ecology, and food studies.
He serves as a research assistant professor in the department of geology and geography at WVU advancing questions related to agri-food systems governance with an emphasis on the political economy of nutrition assistance programs. His PhD dissertation The Food Bank Fix: Hunger, Capitalism and Humanitarian Reason (2019) drew on a multi-sited institutional ethnography of emergency food networks in West Virginia to uncover the relationships between the state, private businesses and the nonprofit sector that maintain feeding lines in place and linked across space. He is building on this work to continue to study the moral, political, and economic place of expanding humanitarian food networks across the world and how these might fit within broader debates about sustainable food futures.
Josh directs the work of the Food Justice Lab at the Center for Resilient Communities and offers support to the Food System Development and Community Economies Labs. He is actively engaged with local, national, and international coalitions that seek to advance the right to food through principles of food sovereignty and food justice. He is passionate about popular education in the Freirean tradition of critical pedagogy and committed to participatory action research that advances more just and sustainable economic systems.