Gretchen Sneegas
Research
Dr. Gretchen Sneegas critically examines food, energy, and water as key mediators of human-environment interaction. As a human geographer with interdisciplinary training, she combines critical social theory and mixed methods to examine resource governance in times of disturbance and conflict. Her research seeks to understand the deeply uneven landscapes of power which shape and constrain how people interact with diverse resources.
Dr. Sneegas is currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate as part of the Pathways to Sustainable Urban Water Security X-Grant project at Texas A&M University, which examines freshwater access and infrastructure in the context of climate change As a team member, she is coordinating multiple case studies in Texas, California, Australia, Israel, and at the global corporate sector scale. Her focus within the project examines diverse perspectives on desalination technologies at each of these case study sites using critical Q methodology, an innovative mixed methods approach combining critical discourse analysis and standard Q methodology.
Dr. Sneegas developed Critical Q as a central methodological intervention within my dissertation research on agricultural production, shale gas development, and environmental subjectivity. She also piloted critical Q analysis with her earlier work on raw milk, risk, the politics of knowledge. Q combines standard Q protocol with critical discourse analysis to make the methodology more attentive to the uneven social and power relations which shape discourses, perspectives, and worldviews. Dr. Sneegas’ research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the AAG Rural Geography and Qualitative Research Specialty Groups, the University of Georgia Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research Grant, and the University of Georgia Dissertation Completion Award. She is currently working on a book project inspired by her dissertation research, tentatively titled Land Rich, Cash Poor: Struggling American Farms and the Marcellus Shale Gas Boom.
Selected Publications
PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
2019 Sneegas, G. “Making the case for critical Q methodology.” The Professional Geographer 0(0): 1-10. DOI: 10.1080/00330124.2019.1598271
2018 Lehrer, N. and G. Sneegas. “Beyond polarization: Using Q methodology to explore stakeholders’ views on pesticide use, and related risks for agricultural workers, in Washington State’s tree fruit industry.” Agriculture and Human Values 35(1): 131-147. DOI: 10.1007/s10460-017-9810-z
2016 Sneegas, G. “Media representations of hydraulic fracturing and agriculture: A New York case study.” Extractive Industries and Society 3(1): 95-102. DOI: 10.1016/j.exis.2015.11.011
2014 Sneegas, G. “‘Sustenance out of refuse’: Detroit, invisible capital, and the search for food justice.” Graduate Journal of Food Studies 1(1): 11-24.
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
2017 Sneegas, G. “‘Dry Campus, My Ass’: An Auto-Ethnography of U.S. Academic Drinking Culture.” Graduate Journal of Food Studies 4(1).
2016 Sneegas, G. “Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins.” Antipode Book Reviews.
2013 Sneegas, G. and O. Lindsey. “‘Produce Change’: Marketing and Food Access Program for City of Pittsburgh Farmers Markets 2013 Report.” Penn State Extension – Allegheny County.
Education
PhD, University of Georgia, Department of Geography, 2019
MA, Chatham University, Falk School of Sustainability, Food Studies Department, 2014
Awards
2018-19 University of Georgia Graduate School Dissertation Completion Award
2018 Ph.D. Student Paper Award, AAG Qualitative Research Specialty Group
2017 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant
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2016 Student Research Award, AAG Rural Geography Specialty Group
2015 University of Georgia Graduate School Innovative and Interdisciplinary Research
Grant
2014 Alex McIntosh Graduate Paper Prize, Association for the Study of Food and Society
2014 Chatham University Graduate Student Assembly Empirical Excellence Award
