Social Innovation and Sustainability Transition

Radical roots and twenty-first century realities: rediscovering the egalitarian aspirations of Land Grant University Extension.- Palatable disruption: the politics of plant milk.- To the market and back? A study of the interplay between public policy and market-driven initiatives to improve farm animal welfare in the Danish pork sector.- How farmers "repair" the industrial agricultural system.- Agencing an innovative territorial trade scheme between crop and livestock farming: the contributions of the sociology of market agencements to alternative agri-food network analysis.- Competing food sovereignties: GMO-free activism, democracy and state preemptive laws in Southern Oregon.- Feeding the melting pot: inclusive strategies for the multi-ethnic city.- Acting like an algorithm: digital farming platforms and the trajectories they (need not) lock-in.- Sustainability transitions in agri-food systems: insights from South Korea's universal free, eco-friendly school lunch program.- The real meal deal: assessing student preferences for "real food" at Fort Lewis College.- From texts to enacting practices: defining fair and equitable research principles for plant genetic resources in West Africa.- A carrot isn't a carrot isn't a carrot: tracing value in alternative practices of food exchange.- From left behind to leader: gender, agency, and food sovereignty in China.- Effects of institutional pressures on the governance of food safety in emerging food supply chains: a case of Lebanese food processors.- Farmer field schools and the co-creation of knowledge and innovation: the mediating role of social capital.- Virtualizing the 'good life': reworking narratives of agrarianism and the rural idyll in a computer game.- When farmers are pulled in too many directions: comparing institutional drivers of food safety and environmental sustainability in California agriculture.- Political economy

Geoff Desa is a professor of management at the Lam Family College of Business. He is a member of the Sustainability Group within the Lam Family College of Business and teaches business and society, strategic management, and social entrepreneurship. Geoff's research examines resource mobilization and venture development in the technology and social entrepreneurship sector. He earned his Ph.D. in business from the University of Washington in Seattle with emphases in technology entrepreneurship, strategic management, and public affairs. Prior to that, Geoff worked at Novera Optics and at Hewlett Packard as an optical engineer. He earned his M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University. He is on the board of the Common Data Project, a technology social venture engaged in information technology privacy.


Xiangping JIA is the Chief Scientist of International Agricultural Research Group at Agricultural InformationInstitute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS). He obtained the PhD from University of Hohenheim in 2008, Germany. He has been researching a broad range of development issues associated with agricultural sustainability and innovations, combined digital and human advice in agriculture, agro-food chain governance, sustainable food systems and social finance. 

He has been an advisor and consultant for several international organizations (the World Bank, FAO, IFAD, UNEP, SDC, etc.) and a variety of entities of the private sector and the civil society. Thinking and working in hybrid constructions of issues and teams, he values partnerships and impact-oriented changes from system perspectives.