Professor Stoddard’s research focuses on the policy and politics of food production in a changing climate and global economy. Her work analyzes the ways in which the governance of agriculture and livestock production shapes our food systems’ vulnerability and capacity to adapt to drought, floods, the global spread of disease, and other hazards. She is also interested in issues of environmental injustice in the livestock industry and the ability of social movements to make powerful changes, especially in the age of social media. Stoddard is a Switzer Environmental Fellow and works as an adviser for the Waterkeeper Alliance’s Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation division in North Carolina.

Professor Stoddard is passionate about teaching and about providing students with the tools to question previously taken-for-granted relationships of power, nature, and society. She is always impressed by how much her students accomplish in and out of the classroom, and she enjoys learning from the knowledge and life experiences that her students bring to class. She is excited to work with and advise students at WPI on their projects in the Great Problem Seminars and during their Interactive Qualifying Projects. She is also excited about working with students in her environmental studies, social science, and policy studies courses. She believes these courses will help students to learn about the complex challenges facing our society today, such as resource scarcity and conflict, a changing climate, and social and economic inequality. Her courses will also enable students to understand the social, economic, and political contexts in which they will be innovating and developing technologies. Finally, her courses will help students to analyze and communicate how their areas of expertise can help to address some of our world’s greatest problems.