​Institution & Policy Analyst and Developer
STRATEGIST
Researcher, Farmer, Creative 

Current

Agromedicine Faculty
Director, NC AgrAbility (www.agrability.org)
keeping farmers with disabilities in production
North Carolina Agriculutural and Technical State University
cacookmarshall  at    ncat.edu
Current research and practice platform at NC A&T
Extreme Weather Response: Farms & Farm Communities
​Rural-urban conflict and space


​Principal, Big Four, Kimball, WV
An upcoming hospitality/art gallery/community art space in the rural for McDowell County, WV and for connection and challenge across rural places/space in the US and abroad
Forthcoming in 2023 with Lexington Press of Rowman & Littlefield in their Studies in Urban-Rural Dynamics series: Big Rural.
Big Rural reconceptualizes the economic sectors we take for granted in the 21st Century United States, especially those in single sector rural regions. It analyzes these as large technical systems in order to reveal their developments as deliberate interventions that can be dissected, dismantled, and replaced.
Big Rural examines the historical making of the rural industrial space, or “big rural” and this space’s brittleness as a system, how this system breaks and under what duress, and how big rural may be dismantled.
Then, given hindsight, Big Rural ​enters into the remaking of this big rural space from various paths–policy, planning, practice, research.



​

a couple of Problems Cook Marshall Has solved

Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media
Cook Marshall reorganized the constituent outreach for the "See Jane" project into a fully fledged organization, "The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media," designed its nonprofit business model and course of action, stewarded its inceptive major donor, and conceived and launched its signature events and mode of outreach and engagement.
Draft National Rural Strategy/
​Draft Sustainable Agricultural Strategy
Cook Marshall analyzed the need for the 
US to address rural issues outside of its current
catch-all "The Farm Bill." In her book Big Rural she proposes a forward-thinking national rural strategy, and, follows directly with a sustainable agricultural strategy focused on the development of rural sustainable agricultural infrastructure. Cook Marshall insists the latter must be part of a plan for US food security, national security, and making the lives of rural Americans more equitable.

    Contact

Crystal Cook Marshall

Header photo, photo with pigs, photo in grey hat by Nancy Andrews.  Crystal Cook Marshall Copyright © 2023