Christopher M. Bacon is an associate professor in ESS. He completed his BA in Economics and in Environmental Studies at UC Santa Barbara (1995). He received a PhD in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz (2005), and completed postdoctoral studies in Geography at UC Berkeley, before joining ESS in 2010. Chris specializes in sustainable livelihoods and food security in Central America and environmental justice in California. He recently was awarded an NSF grant to study Coping with Food and Water Insecurity in Nicaragua, with several of his SCU colleagues. Chris's work often takes a community-based and participatory action research approach to generate knowledge that informs both theory and social change. He has mentored more than 20 undergraduate students, and co-authored publications with several of them. Chris teaches introductory and upper division classes related to environmental policy, politics and planning, political ecology, and food justice.