Lia Kelinsky-Jones

Project focus: Lia will co-lead and co-design a research initiative to map policy engagement activities based at colleges and universities across the United States. This mapping will provide a unique lens into what’s happening on the ground across the country, thus informing understanding and recommendations about what’s working and what’s not.

About Lia
Lia Kelinsky-Jones is an interdisciplinary social scientist active in building university-community policy projects and partnerships. Her research focuses on how policy influences the praxis of university actors with regard to participation and sustainable agriculture within international agricultural research and policy projects. This work directly feeds into her leadership of a university-community policy project to develop a more climate-resilient food system in the Appalachian region of Virginia. She has over a decade of experience in project and program management at Virginia Tech working to extend the expertise of the university to the benefit of communities both locally and globally. Personally, she grew up in five different countries and speaks both Spanish and French. She is an avid gardener of both food and flowers and enjoys road and mountain biking in her spare time.