Shelley Koch

Professor of Sociology, Chair of Sociology Sociology

Dr. Koch has been teaching Sociology at Emory & Henry College since 2010.

Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, she received her degrees from The University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas.

Her areas of specialization include gender, food studies, the environment, and consumer society. She also teaches in courses in the Women and Gender Studies and Food Studies programs.

She has published three books. The first, A Theory of Grocery Shopping: Food, Choice, and Conflict, was published in 2012 and is based on her dissertation research looking at the social organization of grocery shopping from the perspective of the grocery shopper. Her next book, an edited collection titled Food, Masculinity, and Home: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, was published in 2017. Her most recent book, Gender and Food: A Critical Look at the Food System, was published by Rowman & Littlefield in March 2019. This book examines how gender shapes the food system from growing food to eating it.

She has also published articles in disciplinary journals such as Social Currents and American Journal of Economics and Sociology.

She received the HOPE Award in 2018 for her work on sustainable local food systems, and tends a garden and raises chickens in Washington County.