dr. S (Siera) Vercillo

Dr. Siera Vercillo is an Assistant Professor investigating the governance of sustainable agri-food system transformations at the Public Administration and Policy Group at Wageningen University. She is a scholar-activist pursuing participatory action research in the fields of feminist geography, political ecology and critical development studies, mainly grounded in northern Ghana where she has been working within communities for over a decade. Her work advances the literature on agrarian and nutrition transitions, smallholder livelihoods, food systems, household food security and food sovereignty. She is particularly interested in experimental and applied qualitative research methodologies for facilitating transformative change.

Siera's scholarship is partner and community-driven and she mobilizes research for civil society, donors, NGOs and government policy and practice to advocate for agroecology and food sovereignty. Her work is dedicated to upholding the rights of peasant farmers. She holds bylines in Aljazeera and publishes in scholarly journals like the Journal of Rural Studies , Ambio, the European Journal of Development Research , Gender, Place and Culture , and Third World Quarterly .

Siera has won several prestigious national and internationally awarded research grants where she serves as Principal Investigator. Her latest projects include,

• 'Creative kitchens for amplifying neglected and underutilized foods – A Partnership with the Ghana Food Movement for locally resilient food systems' (Partnership Engage Grant, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada-SSHRC).
   
• 'Connecting and building the capacity of rural to urban food sovereignty organizations in Ghana' (Connections Grant, SSHRC).
   
• 'Explaining the influence of a globalizing local urban food system on food security in Tamale, northern Ghana' (Insight Development Grant, SSHRC).
   
• Collaborating on the 'Towards just sustainability transformations across the North and South: Addressing Externalization effects of the European Green Deal in the Global South' Wageningen Global Sustainability Programme. 

Siera has coordinated and developed many courses at the bachelors and graduate levels, including Gender in the Kitchen; Food Sovereignty; Feeding the City; Environment and Development; Social Science Research Methods; World Cities, among others. 

At WUR she is currently teaching on the courses, Policy, Governance and Law; Transformative Sustainability Practices; Global Institutions; Research Design; and the Politics of Development.