Academic Partners
Peri Bellatyne
Professor, Sociology, Trent University
Peri Bellatyne is a health sociologist interested in the social determinants of health and the impact of institutional systems in influencing social and economic marginalization. Peri also conducts research on the sociology of pharmaceuticals, i.e., the changing role of pharmaceuticals in everyday lives or inequalities in access to essential pharmaceuticals.
Dan Bender
Professor, Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough
Dan is a Canada Research Chair and director of the Culinaria Research Centre, the Uof T’s research unit for the study of food and its relationship to culture, society, and political economy.
Amy Bentley
Professor, Food Studies, New York University
Amy Bentley is a professor of food studies at New York University. Recent works include co-editor of Food for Thought: Nourishment, Culture, Meaning (Springer 2021), and the award-winning Inventing Baby Food: Taste, Health, and the Industrialization of the American Diet (2014). She is co-editor of the Bloomsbury monograph series Food in Modern History: Traditions and Innovations.
William (Bill) McConkey
Assistant Professor, Management, University of Toronto Scarborough
Bill is an Assistant Professor – Teaching Stream, in the department of Management at UTSC, and Academic Director of The BRIDGE New Venture Program. In addition to teaching courses in Strategy and Marketing, Bill supervises students who pursue entrepreneurial opportunities during their work terms. Bill mentors several student organizations and sits on the Board of a number of Canadian companies.
Michael Classens
Assistant Professor, School of the Environment, University of Toronto
Michael is an Assistant Professor in the School of the Environment at University of Toronto. His teaching, research and advocacy work are broadly motivated by commitments to social and environmental justice, particularly within the context of the food system.
Bryan Dale
Assistant Professor, Environment and Geography, Bishop’s University
Bryan Dale is an Assistant Professor at Bishop’s University in Sherbrooke, Quebec. He completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship with the Culinaria Research Centre at the University of Toronto Scarborough, which involved being the Project Manager for the Feeding the City project for one year. His research focuses on the potential expansion of ecological farming in the Canadian context, and the various political-economic and cultural considerations related to food system transformation.
Amiya Kumar Das
Associate Professor, Sociology, Tezpur University
Amiya Kumar Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and coordinator, Centre for Public Policy and Governance at Tezpur University. His research explores multidimensional deprivation, governance, and welfare policies in northeast India with a focus on the state of Assam.
Sara Edge
Associate Professor, Geography and Environmental Studies, X University
Sara Edge is Associate Director, Centre for Studies in Food Security and Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at X University. She collaborates with marginalized communities to address environmental injustices. Sara is leading a SSHRC Grant examining the impacts of COVID-19 on the resiliency and equity of food security programming in Toronto.
Sarah Elton
Assistant Professor, Sociology, X University
Sarah is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at X University and is a multidisciplinary food scholar. She is the author of several award-winning books on urban food systems, including Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet (University of Chicago Press, 2013) and has written for publications including The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, Maclean’s and The Atlantic.
Obidimma Ezezika
Assistant Professor, Health & Society, University of Toronto Scarborough
Obidimma is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream at the University of Toronto in the Department of Health & Society and the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. He is the Founding Director and Principal Investigator of the Global Health & Innovation Lab. Professor Ezezika’s research examines how to scale evidence-based interventions to meet marginalized communities’ health needs at the local and global levels.
Lindsay Goodridge
Lecturer, Dietitian, University of Prince Edward Island
Lindsay Goodridge is a lecturer at the University of Prince Edward Island and a Registered Dietitian with a Master of Public Health in Nutrition and Dietetics from the University of Toronto. She was a junior researcher with Feeding the City during her Population Health placement for the MPH program.
Michael Kessler
Assistant Professor, Trinity College in the University of Toronto
Michael Kessler is an Assistant Professor in the Ethics Society & Law Program at Trinity College in the University of Toronto, and the Raymond Pryke Chair and Director of the Margaret MacMillan Trinity One Program. He also directs Trinity College’s Sustainable Food Systems Research Group. His research looks at legal issues surrounding freedom of expression, consent, environmental and animal ethics, and political equality.
Charles Z. Levkoe
Associate Professor, Health Sciences, Lakehead University
Charles is the Canada Research Chair in Equitable and Sustainable Food Systems and Director of the Sustainable Food Systems Lab at Lakehead University. His community engaged research uses a food systems lens to better understand the importance of, and connections between social justice, ecological regeneration, regional economies and active democratic engagement. https://foodsystems.lakeheadu.ca/
Ken Macdonald
Associate Professor, Human Geography, University of Toronto Scarborough
Ken is a cultural geographer with the Department of Geography and Planning, the Centre for Development Studies, and the Centre for Diasporic and Transnational Studies.
Mary Anne Martin
Adjunct Faculty, Sustainability, Trent University
Mary Anne Martin is an adjunct faculty in the Master of Arts in Sustainability Studies program at Trent University. Her research interests include household food insecurity, the gendering of food work and caring labour, the impacts of community-based food initiatives, and urban agriculture, She is active in food policy work in both Durham Region and Peterborough, Ontario.
B. Lynne Milgram
Professor Emerita, Anthropology, OCAD University
B. Lynne Milgram is Professor Emerita and Adjunct (Anthropology) at OCAD University, Toronto. Her SSHRC-supported research on gender and livelihood in the Philippines analyzes issues in social entrepreneurship, alternative economies, and transnational trade regarding food provisioning, crafts, street vending, and public market redevelopment. An illustrative publication includes “Street Economies in the Urban Global South” (co-edited 2013).
Jeffrey M. Pilcher
Professor, Historical and Cultural Studies, University of Toronto Scarborough
Jeffrey is a Professor of History and Food Studies and is currently leading a research project on the history of migrant foodways in Toronto.
Nicole Spiegelaar
Assistant Professor, Trinity College in the University of Toronto
Nicole is an Assistant Professor and the Associate Director of the Trinity Sustainability Initiative which connects the classroom, student research, internships, and campus sustainability through experiential learning. Her research focusses on socioecological relations in the process of decolonizing and naturalizing food systems.
Organization Partners
Debbie Field
Coordinator, Coalition for Healthy School Food, Associate Member, Centre for Studies in Food Security, Ryerson University
Debbie is Coordinator of the Coalition for Healthy School Food and Associate Member, Centre for Studies in Food Security, at Ryerson University. She was executive director of FoodShare for 25 years.
Tinashe Kanengoni
Program Manager, Centre for Immigrants and Community Servies
Tinashe Kanengoni is the Program Manager for Community Food Programs at the Centre for Immigrants and Community Services (CICS). CICS’s community food program currently operates a 3500 sq. community garden, a commercial community kitchen, a culturally sensitive food pantry and currently working on a collaborative ethno-centric community shared greenhouse and seed saving HUB initiative.
Yusra Khalid
Community Liaison, National Zakat Foundation
Yusra Khalid is a lawyer and has worked in the not-for-profit sector internationally for many years. She emigrated to Canada in 2020 and enrolled in the University of Toronto’s Global Professional Master of Law program to pursue a legal career in Ontario. During her studies, she was a Research Assistant for the Feeding City Lab. In that role, she was engaged with various Muslim organizations. Today she is the community liaison between Feeding City and the National Zakat Foundation (“NZF”).
Rhonda Teitel-Payne
Co-coordinator, Toronto Urban Growers
Rhonda has been active for over twenty years with programs such as The Stop Community Food Centre, Toronto Community Garden Network, and the World Crops project. At Toronto Urban Growers (TUG), she spearheaded the Grower2Grower initiative to showcase newcomer and Indigenous growers.
Marina Queirolo
Founder of Market City TO
Marina is a community builder and entrepreneur by nature, and a designer and marketer by trade. Since 2010, Marina has managed Evergreen’s initiatives related to food policy and public markets. She has also been a member of the Toronto Food Policy Council since 2013, and lead for the Public Food Markets and Market City project. Marina’s passion for food, public markets and community motivates her to find ways to collaborate and work together with other practitioners towards a common goal: A robust regional economy and healthier more inclusive communities.