Klimek, Milena

Milena is a postdoc focusing on food and farming issues and more specifically on sustainable agriculture in curriculum and course development and food system studies. She completed her doctoral studies at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, in Vienna, Austria (BOKU), specifically on the role of values in the farmers’ markets of Vienna and Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her masters, also completed at BOKU, highlighted farmer and consumer practices, in which she examined organic partnerships in Austria and Minnesota through a social theory perspective. She is an Austrian-American who grew up in Minnesota and completed her undergraduate degree in 2005 at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN with a double major focusing on Environmental Studies, Sustainable Development and Alternative Agriculture disciplines. Helping her understand her food system(s) and the actual stakeholders involved, have been her non-academic related work experiences including working for a small ecological and edible landscape design company, holding a variety of environmental research and policy as well as natural resource management positions, along with work on a small organic dairy in the Austrian Alps. Additional research interests include: urban and rural food-system research, agroecology, the future of farming, transdisciplinarity, participatory methods and stakeholder involvement; curriculum development and innovative teaching methodologies; and qualitative research methods.