Department of Anthropology, PhD Student
Ariana Ávila is a medical/sociocultural anthropologist interested in food as a form of care among the farmworker community in Immokalee, Florida. Her research is guided by viewing food insecurity in Immokalee as food apartheid which better describes the violence of the political and racialized (food) structures that cause inaccessibility to food spaces. She includes a socio-cultural analysis of Southwest Florida and the lens of U.S. immigration status to food apartheid which creates an additional barrier to food access. Yet, farmworkers and their families transform food into care by sharing foods, maintaining gardens, and more. She earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of South Florida and her Master’s in Public Health from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. Prior to beginning her PhD program, she served as a Global Health Fellow with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti (2016-2019). She is from a Mexican migrant farmworker family, born and raised in Arcadia, Florida. She loves cooking, gardening, plants, and most of the time, blending the three.