Leslie McLees

Eugene

Leslie McLees is on the Department of Geography faculty at the University of Oregon. Her research focuses on a postcolonial perspective on urban agriculture in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She explores how cities work beyond a political economy framework and how informality is embedded and legitimized in urban systems. She utilizes not only interviews, but mental mapping and photo voice to elicit an understanding of how people use farms in their daily lives. The purpose is to move studies of informality past the binary that separates research in the ‘Global North’ from that in the ‘Global South’ in order to legitimate the ways that people not only survive, but thrive in cities. Currently, she is the Undergraduate Coordinator and Advisor, Associate Director of the Carnegie Global Oregon Ethics Program, and Program Director for the Master’s program in Geography Education (EDGE) at the University of Oregon.