Julia Davies

2022 recipient of the Climate Assessment for the Southwest (CLIMAS) Environment & Society Graduate Fellows Program.

Julia Davies is a PhD candidate in the University of Arizona’s School of Geography, Development and Environment. She holds a BSc (Honors) in Environmental and Geographical Science and MSc in Climate Change and Development from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Julia’s PhD research addresses how low-income urban households in Zambia maintain food security amid persistent social and environmental challenges. Through this work, she aims to establish a more integrated understanding of the interactions among key components of urban food systems in sub-Saharan Africa, including household-scale urban agriculture, transitions in urban food retail environments, and urban food systems governance. Her work forms part of a broader, collaborative project that investigates the linkages between coupled human-natural systems and across rural-urban continuums in sub-Saharan Africa. As a CLIMAS Environment and Society Fellow, Julia will leverage her dissertation research to engage in stakeholder outreach with decision-makers and the public in Zambia. Along with her partners at the Zambia Agriculture Research Institute, she will co-produce a series of two online webinars, two policy briefs, and one op-ed that will stimulate conversations among the stakeholders who are responsible for various functions related to food security in Zambia. The title of her project is “Urban Food System Transformations and Governance in Sub-Saharan Africa.”