Alex Korsunsky

Doctoral Candidate

Alex is a cultural anthropologist with interests in political ecology, food systems, and Mexican immigration to the United States. After graduating with a BA from Carleton College, he spent two years working at organic farms and community gardens in the Pacific Northwest. His primary research site in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where he grew up, is the site of varied and abundant agriculture and forest industries, as well as the center of the state’s rapidly growing Mexican and Mexican-American communities who account for the majority of farm and forest workers. His fieldwork is based on participant observation in a variety of agricultural settings: the blueberry harvest on large industrial monoculture farms; small organic and conventional farms and nurseries owned by immigrants and former seasonal farmworkers; a sustainable agriculture training program and small business development program provided by a local immigrant community organization; and PCUN, the local farmworkers union and hub for local electoral and legal activism on behalf of immigrants.