PwintPhyu Nandar, M.E.Sc. ’24

Year: 
2024

Current Position:
Global Food Fellow

A little bit about Pwint:
PwintPhyu Nandar is a Master of Environmental Science (MESc) candidate at the Yale School of the Environment, focusing on access to cultural food in urban areas. This area of focus is important to Pwint, as a Burmese immigrant/settler in the United States who is always thinking about where to get the ingredients necessary to make home-cooked Burmese meals. Although food has always been the way to her heart, her introduction to food systems comes from an environmental science background and a passion for understanding human-environment interactions. After learning about environmental injustice as an undergraduate at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), she realized that her community in Richmond, California was experiencing environmental racism at the hands of the Chevron Refinery. That moment led her to major in Environmental Science, concentrating on environmental justice issues. She pivoted into studying food systems to better understand how food sits at the intersection of culture, urbanizaition, and sustainability. 

 Currently, she is researching how Greater New Haven residents access their cultural foods by collecting surveys and cooking with residents.