Geography professor seeks to build interdisciplinary connections on campus through food
As a child — and even during her early days as an academic — San Diego State geography professor Pascale Joassart-Marcelli wasn’t necessarily thinking about spending her career studying food, but it was always a large part of her life.
She grew up picking strawberries from her neighbor’s farm in Belgium during the summer, learned how to cook from her mother and even attempted to grow a garden, without much success for the latter, she said.
“When I was about 10 years old or something, I decided that we needed to have a garden,” Joassart-Marcelli said. “My parents did not know anything about gardening, so we had no idea what we were doing. I just remember that I was planting carrots in the garden and I would go pull out the carrots, and then I’d look ‘oh, they’re too small,’ and I would put them back in, and that just didn’t work too well.”
Food has been an integral part of her life ever since, and she continues to share her journey to find different types of food in traveling and cooking…
She grew up picking strawberries from her neighbor’s farm in Belgium during the summer, learned how to cook from her mother and even attempted to grow a garden, without much success for the latter, she said.
“When I was about 10 years old or something, I decided that we needed to have a garden,” Joassart-Marcelli said. “My parents did not know anything about gardening, so we had no idea what we were doing. I just remember that I was planting carrots in the garden and I would go pull out the carrots, and then I’d look ‘oh, they’re too small,’ and I would put them back in, and that just didn’t work too well.”
Food has been an integral part of her life ever since, and she continues to share her journey to find different types of food in traveling and cooking…
