Assistant Professor, A Alfred Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning
About
Lesli Hoey is an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Planning. She teaches graduate courses in food systems policy and planning, planning in developing countries, and program evaluation and planning. Hoey uses food systems as a lens to study the socio-political and institutional factors that mediate the ability of citizen planners and professional planners alike to realize their goals. She is particularly interested in the intersection of program design and food policy advocacy, implementation, and evaluation.
Her past work, focused primarily on Bolivia and comparative research, has examined strategies for mainstreaming nutrition into national policy agendas, the challenges of multisectoral food policy, factors constraining nutrition interventions in rapidly urbanizing contexts, approaches for integrating evidence-based and experiential knowledge in food and nutrition evaluation, and "adaptive" forms of food policy implementation (i.e. iterative, collaborative, negotiated). Her current projects examine collaborative initiatives aiming to reshape Michigan's food systems, the long-term impacts of innovative land redistribution planning in Bolivia's "soy capital" region, and factors influencing Bolivia's dual burden - the persistence of undernutrition alongside the rise in obesity in rapidly urbanizing metropolitan areas.
Prior to pursuing a Ph.D., Hoey worked as a program evaluator and action researcher, focusing on equity-oriented K-12 and higher education programs in the US as well as rural development, malnutrition and food security projects in the Mississippi Delta, Peru, Albania and Bolivia. She earned a PhD and master's degree in City and Regional Planning from Cornell University and a B.A. in psychology from Earlham College.
