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Damien Thompson currently teaches in the Masters of the Environment Graduate Program. The MENV program is a professional master's degree administered by the Environmental Studies Department. Damien is not accepting students interested in pursuing an MS or PhD in Environmental Studies. If you would like to learn more about the MENV program, please visit: Masters of the Environment | University of Colorado Boulder.
Damien Thompson, PhD is the Sustainable Food Systems Specialization Lead in the Masters of the Environment Graduate Program at the University of Colorado, Boulder. In addition to his training and teaching in anthropology, Dr. Thompson also holds a certification in Permaculture Design, an Advanced Permaculture Design certification as well as a Teaching Certification from the Yoga Alliance. He is a farmer and a designer of biodiverse food producing landscapes.
In 2018 Dr. Thompson co-founded FrontLine Farming a Denver based BIPOC and women led farming non-profit organization whose mission is to create greater equity across the food system, to support and create greater leadership and access for women and people of color in our food systems.
As an activist, public intellectual and researcher Dr. Thompson's interests are wide ranging. He has taught and spoken about food justice, food sovereignty, permaculture design, small-scale urban food production, community food systems, racial equity in the food system and urban geography. Specifically, Dr. Thompson is interested in how communities can utilize traditional and modern information and practices to build food systems, which center marginalized and oppressed peoples, restore ecosystems, build biodiversity, support cultural diversity as well as provide individuals and families with the highest level of access to the means to support their own resilience and sovereignty. He centers racial equity as a key organizing principle of his work.
Dr. Thompson is a mayor- appointed member of the Sustainable Food Policy Council for the City of Denver, a 2021 Rocky Mountain Farmers Union Fellow, a convener of the Colorado Farm and Food System Response Team and a lead convener in Project Protect Food Systems Workers. He has been recognized as the Regis University 2019 Faculty of the Year and 2020 Faculty Lecturer of the Year. Dr. Thompson graduated from Elon University with a B.A. in Sociology and received his doctoral degree from American University in Washington D.C.