Ryan Isakson

Ryan Isakson is Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough. He holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.  Broadly, he is interested in the political economy of international development, with specific focus upon agriculture, rural livelihoods, and food provisioning in Latin America.  He has conducted research on market development, peasant livelihoods, and the cultivation of agricultural biodiversity; market-led land reform; agri-food certification; payments for environmental services; and the contemporary ‘flex crops’ boom.  His current foci are (1) farmer vulnerability and the financialization of agri-food provisioning, and (2) the impacts of oil palm expansion upon food entitlements and water quality in northern Guatemala.  He teaches three courses for the International Development Studies program: (1) The Political Economy of International Development (IDSB01), (2) The Economics of Small-Enterprise and Microfinance, and (3) The Political Economy of Food.
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