Graduate Directory

Summary of Expertise

Futures of Ecological Work; Agriculture; Labor; Political Economy; Digital Technologies

Research Interests

I currently study labor, plant materiality, and digital technology in complex agricultural systems. My research contributes to and broadens discussions around incomplete automation, the future of work, and 'green' capitalism amid climate change.

Biography, Education and Training

2019 MA, University of California, Berkeley

2017 BA, Lehigh University

Honors, Awards and Grants

2024 Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation Fellowship 

2024 Social Science Research Council Data Fluencies Doctoral Research Grant

2024 American Sociological Association Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant 

2024 UCSC Center for Labor and Community Graduate Student Fellowship

2024 Agricultural Experiment Station Fellowship

2024 Marxist Institute for Research Summer School

2024 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, UCSC

2023 Heller Agroecology Graduate Student Research Fellowship, UCSC

2022 Center for Archival Research and Training (CART) Fellow, UCSC 

2022 Smithsonian Institute Graduate Student Fellowship, Washington D.C.

2022 Social Science Research Council Dissertation Proposal Development Program  

2022 Dean’s Travel Grant, UCSC

2022 Heller Agroecology Graduate Student Research Fellowship, UCSC

2021 Institute for Social Transformation Sprout Grant (PI: Julie Guthman), UCSC

2020-2022 University of California Regents’ Fellowship

2019 Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award, University of California, Berkeley

Selected Publications

Sullivan, Summer. 2023. Ag-tech, agroecology, and the politics of alternative farming futures: The challenges of bringing together diverse agricutlural epistemologies. Agriculture and Human Values. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10454-2

Sullivan, Summer. 2023. The immaculate conception of data: Agribusiness, activists, and their shared politics of the future. By Kelly Bronson, Québec: McGill-Queen’s University Press. 2022. Journal of Agrarian Change. https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12548

Cunniff, Abby, and Sullivan, Summer. 2022. This Prison in California Forced Incarcerated People to Drink Arsenic for Years. https://truthout.org/articles/this-prison-in-california-forced-incarcerated-people-to-drink-arsenic-for-years/

Sullivan, Summer, and Guthman, Julie. 2021. Sensing the Fields: A Report on the Emerging Ag-Tech Initiative at UCSC. UC Santa Cruz. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6029523m

Selected Exhibitions

Norton, Alix, Sullivan, Summer, and Collins, Riley. Guide to the William H. Friedland Papers [MS 076]. University Archives, University Library, University of California, Santa Cruz. https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf4f59p0k4/

Teaching Interests

Instructor of Record: Race and Environment, Spring 2024

Political Ecology, Human-Environment Geographies, Race & Environment, Critical Technology Studies, Agricultural Systems