Category Archives: Current Team Members

Touseef Yousuf Mir

 Touseef Yousuf Mir is an ethnographic researcher, teacher, and public engagement & advocacy professional. He currently serves as faculty at the Centre for Development Studies, Department of Social and Policy Sciences (SPS), University of Bath, United Kingdom. His work takes a principally multidisciplinary approach sitting at the intersection of conflict studies, comparative politics, and everyday state and society. Using the ethnographic (qualitative) methodology, his work upends the gaze to the popular experience side of the state-society debate within conflict studies. His work particularly looks at the protracted conflict situation of Kashmir.


                

 

 

Kahad Adamu

A doctoral student in urban and regional planning, Kahad Adamu is interested in the political ecology of gold mining in Sub-Saharan Africa and managing natural resources (land and water), land management and administration, and affordable housing. 

At the Food Lab, Kahad works on a variety of analytical projects. He is currently investigating the racial disparities in the spatial distribution of retail food destinations in Erie County. He is also involved in the Healthy Corner Store Initiative (HCSI) project.  

Before joining UB, Kahad earned an MSc in Urban Development Planning from University College London (UCL) and a BSc (Hons) in Land Economy from KNUST in Ghana. Kahad previously worked as an adjunct lecturer at Kumasi Technical University in Kumasi, Ghana, where he taught courses such as Land Use Planning and Administration and Property Rating and Taxation. He also worked with the Land Resources and Management Center (LRMC) on projects that examined urban governance and informal settlement in Ghana’s capital city.

Zane Longwell

Zane Longwell is a current Master of Urban Planning student at the University at Buffalo investigating how the City of Buffalo can support locally-owned food retail. He is interested in food systems equity, urban agriculture, climate justice, and affordable housing. He was recognized for his advocacy work as the Faculty Liaison with the Graduate Planning Student Association by receiving a Master of Urban Planning Service Award and was also nominated for a Pillars of Leadership Student Organization Officer of the Year award. In 2022, he completed his Bachelor’s Degree in Architectural Studies at Kent State University. Outside of school, Zane enjoys watching reality TV, reading, going to coffee shops, and hiking.

 

Insha Akram

Insha Akram is interested in understanding the experiences of women smallholder farmers living in the conflict setting of Kashmir valley in the Himalayan region within their communities’ food systems and creating equitable spaces for women. Her research interests include gender discrimination, women’s equity within traditional markets, and food sovereignty in occupied regions. In the Lab, Insha’s work focuses on smallholder farmers growing indigenous collard greens in Srinagar city of Jammu and Kashmir and coordinates all of the lab’s team.  Insha is currently pursuing a Master’s in Urban and Regional Planning with a specialization in Community Health and Food Systems.
Before pursuing graduate studies at the University at Buffalo, Insha trained in biological sciences and business management. She has worked in the IT industry and food retail industries. During her work in the retail industry, her perspectives changed while working with differently-abled/disabled employees, reinforcing her focus on creating equitable systems. Outside the lab, she enjoys reading novels, horse riding, and eating sweets. She is a nature lover.

Carol E. Ramos-Gerena

Carol E. Ramos Gerena is interested in agroecology, land use planning, critical food policy literacy, and food sovereignty. She has worked in governmental and non-governmental organizations that support community development projects in Puerto Rico (PR). For about a decade, she has promoted agroecological farming and collaborated on the environmental restoration of abandoned buildings and lands near public housing and public school sites in PR. At the UB Food Lab, Carol coordinates a bi-city action-research initiative to promote urban agriculture policy designed by and for people of color in the cities of Buffalo and Minneapolis. 

Carol is currently pursuing a doctorate in urban and regional planning at the University at Buffalo. She is an Arthur A. Schomburg Fellow and a Health Policy Research Scholar (HPRS) supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). Prior to joining UB, Carol completed her Bachelor’s Degree in Biology at the University of Puerto Rico in Mayagüez Campus and a Master’s degree in Environmental Planning at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras. Her Master’s thesis focused on sustainable planning of agroecological initiatives in K-12 public schools in Puerto Rico. 

In her spare time, Carol enjoys playing with her pets, talking with her family, painting, biking, reading, urban farming, watching movies, and hearing/playing Afrolatinoamerican music.

Cameron T. Herman

Dr. Cameron Herman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and an affiliate faculty member in Africana Studies at Buffalo State College. His teaching and research broadly focuses on understanding the ways marginalized groups experience and navigate social inequalities in urban environments. Cameron has published solo and collaborative journal articles, chapters in edited volumes and online publications on a range of topics including Black artists’ response to gentrification, housing activism and neoliberal governance, Black masculinity in hip hop. In the wake of COVID-19’s onset, Cameron’s research agenda has expanded through collaborations with community partners and equity-minded scholars in the UB Food Systems and Healthy Communities lab to support community-based responses to inequitable food systems in Buffalo, NY. In his free time, Cameron enjoys spending time with his wife and daughter, exploring neighborhoods on his bicycle and photographing everyday life. 

 

Radhika P. Kumar

Radhika P Kumar is a full-time faculty member at the College of Architecture Trivandrum (C.A.T). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in architecture from Bangalore University, and a Master’s degree in Planning (Housing) from the University of Kerala (College of Engineering, Trivandrum).

Her research interests include the role of planning in building ‘Healthy’ cities, social rental housing as a means to achieve “Housing for All”, and urban microclimate studies as a guide to urban form development. Her present academic position also allows her to indulge her other interests like instructional design for active learning, as well as architecture and planning pedagogy.

While pursuing her master’s program, she had the opportunity to participate in a multidisciplinary, international-collaboration studio project headed by Dr. Samina Raja, in Maradu, Kerala; and is now associated with the Food Lab as a Remote Research Affiliate for its activities in Kerala. In this capacity, she has recently participated in the Food Lab’s Plan-REFUGE program, seeking to understand the issues faced by smallholder farmers in predominantly agrarian countries like India.

Apart from her academic contribution to the sustainability cause, Radhika also actively volunteers in programs that impart ethical and spiritual values, especially among children and youth, since she strongly believes that inner transformation and understanding individual social responsibility, can go a long way in achieving a truly sustainable future.

Yeeli Mui

Yeeli Mui is a scholar of public health and urban planning. Dr. Mui’s research, teaching, and practice are driven by a focus to advance health equity through the lens of planning for food systems and community development. Using mixed-methods, she has examined inequities in urban food systems, policies and programs to mitigate obesity risk, and the impact of housing restoration on social capital and mental health outcomes.

As part of a multi-country project in the Global South, Dr. Mui leads an interdisciplinary research team to examine how smallholder farmers’ adaptations – in the face of urbanization, globalization of food, and climate change – impact farmer food security and health in Kerala, India. In the US context, Dr. Mui directs a study that aims to strengthen linkages between neighborhood revitalization efforts and community health through more place- and health-conscious strategies in Baltimore, MD.

Email: yeelimui@buffalo.edu

Affiliations: Community of Excellence in Global Health Equity

Education

PhD, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

MPH, Yale School of Public Health

BS, University of California, Irvine

Select Publications

Mui Y, Ballard E, Lopatin E, Thornton RLJ, Pollack Porter K, Gittelsohn J. A community-based system dynamics approach suggests solutions for improving healthy food access in a low-income urban environment. PLoS ONE. 2019;14(5).  

Mui Y, Hodgson K, Khojasteh M, Raja S. Rejoining the planning and public health fields: Leveraging comprehensive plans to strengthen food systems in an urban versus rural jurisdiction. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. 2018; 8(B):73-93.

Mui Y, Sirwatka A, Kumar R, Resor J, Goldberg D, Shulpani U, Radhakrishnan S, Raja S. Growing our food but nutrition insecure: Adaptations in the daily living practices of smallholder farmers in Kerala, India (under review).

See all publications by Yeeli Mui

Select Honors and Awards

Sylvia and Eddie C. Brown Community Health Scholarship, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 2012-17

11th Annual Postdoctoral Research Symposium (1st Place), 2019

 

Athar Parvaiz

Athar Parvaiz is an award-winning researcher and writer based in Kashmir in the Himalayan region of South Asia. Mr. Parvaiz’s prolific writings illuminate environmental, health and agricultural challenges in the Global South with a special focus on the Himalayan region in South Asia. He has written about the ways in which the Himalayan region is adapting to changes posed by climate change.

His writings are based on grounded and detailed reporting from regions where there is limited availability of data, and data is hard to gather. As a writer, Mr. Parvaiz connects his understanding of locally-embedded environmental issues to global policy responses: In 2009 and 2015, he reported on global climate change negotiations from Copenhagen and Paris with a focus on the implications for the Global South.

Mr. Parvaiz’s work is routinely featured in international, national and regional venues including Thomson Reuters, Mongabay, Inter Press Service, HUFFPOST, Scidev.Net, thethirdpole.net , Scroll, IndiaSpend, Down to Earth, The Wire and Kashmir Observer.

Mr. Parvaiz is currently conducting research and writing about the value of localized food systems in the Global South through a collaboration with the Food Systems Planning and Healthy Community Lab (Food Lab) and the Community for Global Health Equity at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.