Taryn Morrissey, assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, will be a Visiting Food Assistance Scholar in March 2013 at the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

As the RIDGE Center for National Research, IRP hosts emerging food assistance researchers for one-week visits to share their work and meet with IRP affiliates with related interests. Morrissey will present her work to other IRP scholars when she is residence at the IRP RIDGE Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in March 2013.

The Institute for Research on Poverty is one of two food and nutrition assistance research centers established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. As the RIDGE Center for National Research, IRP seeks to stimulate innovative research related to food assistance programs; enable training of researchers interested in food assistance issues; and provide timely and accessible information on new research findings.

Morrissey is one of three DPAP faculty members who have received recognition from IRP in recent years. Bradley Hardy was an IRP Visiting Scholar in 2011-12, and Alison Jacknowitz was awarded a $40,000 grant by IRP RIDGE in 2008 for the study “The Effect of Food Insecurity on the Physical, Cognitive, and Socio-emotional Development of Infants and Toddlers.”

Morrissey and Jacknowitz also received a 2011 $35,000 IRP-RIDGE grant to study “Food Assistance and Children’s Eating Patterns, Food Insecurity, and Obesity: The Influence of Local Food Prices.”