As an urban social geographer, her community-engaged research attends to food justice in urban immigrant communities. In particular, her research has focused on how female immigrants rely on social networks and mobility to cope with food insecurity in Washington, DC, and Medellín, Colombia (see Hammelman, 2017a, 2017b, and 2018). She also studies urban migrant women’s methods for growing food to supplement food budgets, build social capital, and claim a space in the city. This work has developed in partnership with community organizations in Toronto, Canada; Medellín, Colombia; Rosario, Argentina; and Charlotte, NC. In Medellín, this collaboration formed a network of urban gardeners. These gardeners, displaced from the countryside and now living informal settlements, gather regularly to share seeds and stories, and advocate for the preservation of spaces they have made in the city. Colleen received her PhD in Geography and Urban Studies from Temple University, her MA from American University and BA from Colorado State University. She served as a post-doctoral fellow at the Culinaria Research Centre at the University of Toronto where she taught on diasporic foodways. She also spent several years working in pursuit of international human rights at the Robert Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights and Innovations in Civic Participation.
