If you’ve ever packed a lunch to work knowing that your midday break won’t find you faced with a Food Court of tasty options, this is the brown-bagging research project for you.  This fascinating project is about rural food options within the Albertan town of Drayton Valley – an area recently beset by forest fires and presumably a paragon of smallish towns across the country.  This research will include “literature reviews”, “qualitative data collection”, “research team meetings”, and the writing of reports.

For a lucid inquiry into a topic so basic to residents an academic mindset is in order; whereas food can often induce almost a sitcom sense of levity, the reality remains that cities and small towns differ drastically in food options, variety, and even availability.  Here in the Okanagan Valley, known for wonderful weather and beaches, smaller towns such as mine typically have no food available outside of gas stations after about 9PM – drastically different than the “there’s an App for that” mentality in larger cities and college towns, where one’s culinary desires are limited only by one’s bank account, and almost never by the time the clock reads.  So for anyone interested in food (aren’t we all, by necessity at least?) and rural life, this is the Research Assistant project for you!
Interested applicants are asked to submit a resume, cover letter, and 1-2 references to Dr.  Alexa Ferdinands at aferdinands@athabascau.ca.  Good luck!