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Naomi Maisel

Naomi Maisel headshot

Naomi is an intern scholar working on land rights, food security, and international development at the Oakland Institute.

Naomi graduated at the top of her department from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia with a BA in Anthropology. While there she conducted research with the CDC on food access and diabetes and worked in a Medical Botany lab at the University to study the medicinal properties of plant life in conjunction with traditional knowledge systems.

She later received her MA in Gastronomy from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Italy with a focus on Food Anthropology and Diaspora. For her research she spent two months living in a migrant shelter in Tijuana to explore the ways asylum-seekers from different nationalities navigate their collective liminality via food choices.

Her other interests include the creation of diverse, accessible and affordable food systems within large urban cities, the use of biomimicry within engineering to mitigate and build resistance against climate change, and the preservation and integration of traditional ecological knowledge in both rural and urban societies.