The 2024 Thomas Marchione Food-as-a-Human-Right Student award goes to Armani Stewart for her project titled “Mapping Black Women’s Food Geographies: Exploring place, security, and wellness in a Black, plant-based food economy.” Armani’s project investigates how Black women living in “an officially designed food insecure environment” in Atlanta, Georgia utilize their lived experiences and place-specific food practices to meet their nutritional needs while maintaining a plant-based diet. She also considers how Black plant-based food practices and restaurants are influencing individual and community well-being. Reviewers were impressed by the clarity and thoughtfulness of Armani’s research design and were particularly excited about the assets-based approach. They highlighted the project’s alignment with the mission of the Marchione award, especially food security and access.
Armani Stewart is a New Orleans native, with deep roots in Bassfield, Mississippi. She grew up experiencing the regional food cultures of each of these predominantly Black places. Her food experiences in both urban and rural places have shaped her present plant-based lifestyle, love for baking, and concern about the (mis)representation of the foods she grew up eating prepared by the hands of the women in her family; specifically, the framing of her cultural food traditions as the culprit for adverse health outcomes in Black women. By training, Armani is a sociocultural Anthropology PhD student at The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Africana Studies scholar, cultural food and holistic wellness advocate, and writer. Armani’s personal and professional experiences inform her research. Her research looks at the intersections amongst Black plant-based and vegan food traditions, care work, relationality, decolonization, holistic wellness, and knowledge production. She centers Black women’s lived experiences, culinary and nutritional expertise in efforts to reclaim Black women’s health and reframe food stories surrounding their bodies and cultural food traditions, particularly in the American South. Her current PhD research focuses on a diverse Black women vegan food economy in Atlanta, Georgia that centers African Heritage diets and Afro-communitarianism in their practice of veganism -an orientation she finds distinct from the mainstream vegan movement and global food system. This summer, she conducted an ethnographic pilot study within this Black woman vegan food economy, working specifically with a Black woman vegan chef in the African Hebrew Israelite community. She finds the cultural capital (culinary and nutritional expertise) of Black women engaged in holistic commerce as viable sites of expertise for Black women’s holistic wellness.
