Grace Treffinger

Grace Treffinger was born and raised in New Orleans where her early career began as a cook. Her interests grew into exploring local food systems, community land management, and agroecology. How food, history, and ecology interrelate in the Gulf South is now an integral part of Grace’s interests and cooking remains a priority in exploring that.

She is a recent graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Science in Conservation & Resource Studies. Her last semester was spent in southern Chile, conducting research on the role of women's home gardens in cultural and food sovereignty and learning from farmers and educators involved with land-based social movements in Brazil (Landless Workers’ Movement) and Colombia (FENSUAGRO). They showed her the importance of international solidarity while doing on-the-ground work locally to bolster our work and develop support networks. 

The work of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South is the interdisciplinary place-based work Grace hoped to be involved in upon moving home. Her main project at the Center will be supporting the organizing of Anthropocene River Campus: The Human Delta. She will also be coordinating the Third Coast Residential Learning Community and looks forward to learning from the many people and projects involved with the NOCGS. She plans to continue to involve a wider range of people in our work, and broaden our focus into planetary health, environmental and climate justice. The more people whose voices are included in this conversation democratizes and leads us to a more holistic understanding of where we are and where we need to go.