Hugh Simpson

Background

About Hugh Simpson

I am a recent graduate of the Masters of the International Development program at Monash University. My research focuses on gender, food, and security within a framework of self-determination. I am passionate about bridging the gap between research and activism. In 2021, I completed my thesis, investigating the relationship between colonialism, neoliberalism, food, and gender in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It demonstrates that the global food-industrial complex is antithetical to real food security, and calls for replacing it with a culturally relevant and self-determined food system, highlighting already existing Palestinian organization. It further establishes that colonialism and neoliberalism create gendered harm through the current food paradigm. In 2022, my article on Indigenous self-determination and feminism in Abya Yala was published. I am currently working as part of the monitoring, evaluation, and learning team at Global Gardens of Peace, an organization facilitating the construction of greenspaces in trauma settings, including in Gaza, and in mental health spaces in Australia. special interests: food sovereignty; radical feminism; decolonial peacebuilding