Sharing Food, Sharing Knowledge: Partnering Toward Sustainable & Resilient Food Futures

Food sovereignty describes community-based efforts to envision, shape, and help build sustainable food systems through which people and planet can thrive, now and into the future, based on shared knowledge, local context, and social and ecological resiliency. Our working group brings food studies scholars, historians, sociologists, nutrition, dietary, and public health experts, writers, and practitioners together to explore food system sustainability and transformation through community engaged, transdisciplinary, and cross-sectoral research. We explore diverse sites and strategies of community-engaged food resiliency and sustainable development such healthy school food policy, local governance, and global infrastructures; agroecology, small farming networks and sustainable foodways; youth awareness on food and climate transformations; co-learning about Indigenous and Black foodways in Canada and beyond; ethical business models, community kitchens, and food solidarity spaces.

Leads

Faculty Members, University of Toronto

  • Dan Bender, UTSC Physical & Environmental Sciences/History
  • Sarah Elton, Dalla Lana School of Public Health
  • Marney Isaac, UTSC Physical & Environmental Sciences/Geography
  • Jeffrey Pilcher, UTSC Physical & Environmental Sciences/History
  • Daniel Sellen, A&S Anthropology
  • Nicole Spiegelaar, School of Environment
  • Laura Tozer, UTSC Physical & Environmental Sciences/Geography

 Faculty Members Outside University of Toronto

  • Sarah Alexander, Development Sociology, Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU)
  • Michael Kessler, TRIN Ethics Society & Law
  • June Komisar, Architectural Science, TMU
  • Adriana Salay, U. Sao Paolo, Brazil
  • Vera Sadovska, Lund U., Sweden

Postdoctoral Researchers, University of Toronto

  • Nino Bariola, UTSC Culinaria Research Centre
  • Daniel Waltz, Temerty School of Medicine, Nutritional Sciences

Graduate Students, University of Toronto

  • Liann Dsouza, (M.Sc.) UTSC Physical & Environmental Sciences
  • Bradley Dunseith, Anthropology
  • Yinghu Huang, (M.A.) East Asian Studies
  • Aparna Menon, Dalla Lana School of Public Health (DPLH)
  • Asma Musa, DPLH
  • Nicole Ryan, OISE
  • Salma Serry, History
  • Varsha Subramanium (M.A.) Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies

Graduate Students Outside University of Toronto

  • Mohini Mehta, Sociology, Uppsala University, Sweden

Undergraduate Students, University of Toronto

  • Julia Bjelanovic, UTSC Food Studies
  • Jyotshana Chaileyndrachankar, UTSC Human Biology/History
  • Amber McNeil, UTSC International Development Studies
  • Haruka Miyabe, UTSC
  • Narayan Srivastava, UTSC Political Science/Public Policy
  • Abha Roy Simpson, A&S Sociology

Feeding City Interns

  • Catarina Mançano, Public Health, University of Sao Paulo
  • Sandra Iturriaga Pelaez, Indigenous Foodways, UDLAP, Mexico

Community Professionals

  • Leah Bobet, novelist, poet, community organizer
  • Neil Coletta, novelist, poet, community organizer
  • Joe Nasr, Co-Convenor, Toronto Urban Growers