Veronica comes from the hollers of central Appalachia and holds a PhD in International Relations from the American University School of International Service, focusing on Indigenous territorial rights and food sovereignty. She also holds an MA in Gender and Diversity Studies and an MPA in Economic Planning and Development, as well as additional certifications in agricultural science and agroecology.

​

Currently, she is a postdoctoral fellow with the National Science Foundation in Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE). Her project dives into the heart of community seed-food systems, undertaking the first US-based community-impact study of community seed bank systems. She splits her time in the US Southwest and Central Appalachia. 

 

Her research interests relate to global environmental governance for conservation, biodiversity preservation, and community land-and-water rights. Specifically, she works on intersections of Indigenous territorial rights, food and agricultural sovereignty, and agrarian policy in the Americas. She also works on issues of environmental peacebuilding, especially related to transitions from illicit crop production and agrobiodiversity for conflict resolution. She is the founder of an Appalachian non-profit that provides education and outreach to promote food justice and regional seed biodiversity conservation. Veronica has advocated at the UN for rural women's roles in hunger eradication and completed a Fulbright Research Fellowship in India, working with women and Indigenous farmers across the country. She was also awarded a Ford Dissertation Fellowship for 2020-2021.

Veronica has worked for more than a decade on issues of food access, biodiversity conservation, Indigenous rights, and supporting women/women-identified people in farming. Her work spans the Appalachian US, India (specifically the Himalayan region and the Western Ghats), and Latin America (predominantly in Mexico, Peru, and Colombia). She advocates for community-led and participatory research and has extensive training in critical theory, decolonial methodology, ethnography, and participatory action research. Additionally, Veronica is also trained in GIS, Rstudio (text-as-data), network analysis, and policy research.