Publications

See my GoogleScholar page.

Some current and past research

I am leading research projects on "Human-Nature Reconnection & Rewilding Education" and "Learning from the Land: Developing Capacity for Place-Based Learning at the University of Waterloo." I co-led the Land Skills for Wellness and Sustainability project. See the Prospective Students tab for more details on this research area.

I served as co-Chair of the Waterloo Region Food System Roundtable and am past president of the Canadian Association for Food Studies.

My past research focused on alternative food networks, Ecological Agriculture in China and China's Changing Food System, sustainable food systems, farmer livelihoods, and rural development. Some of this work sought to characterize the emerging organic and ecological food sector in China, including the roles of the state, private sector, citizen-consumers, and community organizations, and to explain how China’s institutional context poses unique challenges and opportunities for development of ecological agriculture.

I was part of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council-International Development Research Centre (SSHRC-IDRC)-funded Partnership Grant (2014-19), “Hungry Cities: governance, rapid urbanization and urban food security in the Global South”. This includes a case study in Nanjing, China.

My past (PhD) research examined livelihood vulnerability and access to land among female-headed households and ethnic minorities in the northern uplands of Vietnam through the process of decollectivization and allocation of land to individual households.