Originally from Athens County in southeastern Appalachian Ohio, Jed DeBruin (he/him) is a fifth-year PhD candidate and graduate instructor in the Department of Geography at the University of Kentucky. He currently serves as a graduate teaching assistant and graduate instructor in the University of Kentucky's Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies Program, and as a graduate research assistant for the University of Kentucky's Committee on Social Theory. Jed's research interests include food justice, race & racism, political economy (especially Marxian economics), Appalachia, and political ecologies. Jed's anticipated graduation date is May 2024. 

Jed's dissertation is titled, "From Past to Present: Black Farming in Appalachian Kentucky." In this work, Jed integrates archival methods on Black farming history in Appalachian Kentucky (broadly conceptualized as the eastern and central portions of the state) with oral histories with present-day Black farmers in the region. His archival work focuses on the development of the Black cooperative agricultural extension service in Kentucky, with a particular emphasis on work by a Black county agent operating in Madison County during the first half of the twentieth century, as well as the development of the Appalachian Regional Commission as a decades-long State-led rural redevelopment project. His oral histories - conducted with 11 narrators - details how Black farming has changed over time in this region, as well as the struggles and successes that Black farmers operating today experience in Appalachian Kentucky.