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People
Chairholder
Dr. Alison Blay-Palmer
Founding Director, Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems
Associate Professor, Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University
Directors
Dr. Adrienne Johnson
Associate Director, UNESCO Chair on Food, Biodiversity and Sustainability Studies
Associate Professor, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
Dr. Andrew Spring
Executive Director of Research
Director, Laurier Centre for Sustainable Food Systems
Adjunct Professor and Research Associate, Wilfrid Laurier University
Staff
Elisabeth Miltenburg, Project Coordinator
Shuchita Das, Communications and Project Support Assistant
Students and Postdoctoral Fellows
Dr. Johanna Wilkes
Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
Carla Johnson,
PhD Candidate, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
Chatura Pulasinghage
PhD Candidate, Department of Geography and Environmental Studies
Advisory Committee
*Research Leads
Carla Johnston is a PhD Candidate at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, specializing in community-based participatory action research, Indigenous rights, and food systems governance. She has a decade of experience in political advocacy, community-led planning, and policy analysis with Indigenous Peoples in the Northwest Territories, Canada, and at the United Nations. Carla was a Polar Knowledge Fellow for 2024-2025 and a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholar. She holds a Master of Arts in Political Economy from Carleton University and a Bachelor of Arts in International Development Studies from Trent University.
Damien Conaré is the Secretary General of the UNESCO Chair in World Food Systems at the International Centre for Higher Education in Agricultural Sciences (L'Institut Agro) in Montpellier, France. There, he develops activities around three main areas: coordinating action-research programs, particularly on the sustainability of urban food systems and on food solidarities; developing educational training programs, mainly an Advanced Master Degree on innovations and Policies for Sustainable Food Systems; and fostering science-society dialogues through conferences, seminars, and publications.
Kent Mullinix is Director of Institute for Sustainable Food Systems (ISFS) at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and is engaged in research and development to advance ecologically sound agriculture and robust regional food systems. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Professor in The Faculty of Land and Food Systems at the University of British Columbia and serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems and Community Development. With the ISFS, Kent is currently modeling the food self-reliance and economic development potential for a Vancouver Island bioregion food system and is bringing together key food system actors from across the Vancouver Island bioregion to collaboratively prioritize actions and inform regional food system resilience planning and development.
Laura Gómez Tovar is an engineer in agroecology from the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo. She holds a Master’s degree in Science, Society and Technology, with a specialization in Innovation Systems and Ecological and Social Change, from Roskilde University and Aalborg University in Denmark. She is a researcher and professor in the Department of Agroecology at the Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, as well as a founding researcher of the Interdisciplinary Research Center for Integral Rural Development (CIIDRI). Laura helped establish Chapingo’s Organic Local Market (Tianguis Orgánico Chapingo) and the Mexican Network of Local Organic Markets, both important platforms supporting sustainable agriculture and local economies. Laura is currently collaborating with farmers, researchers, and community leaders in Veracruz State, Mexico to gradually scale up agroecology, prioritizing community-based economies, social justice, health and well-being, and network-based knowledge-sharing.
Lauren Baker is Deputy Director of the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, where she leads program strategy and supports global initiatives focused on climate, biodiversity, food security, and equity. A systems thinker, skilled facilitator, and practical problem-solver, Lauren has worked for over 20 years in non-profit, government, academic, business, and philanthropic contexts. With Global Alliance members and partners, Lauren leads the program strategy and supports diverse organizations and initiatives including the True Cost Accounting Accelerator, Transformational Investing in Food Systems, and the Agroecology Coalition, to address global challenges related to climate, biodiversity, food security, and equity.
Dr. Rachel Carey is a Senior Lecturer in Food Systems in the School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences (SAFES) at the University of Melbourne, where her teaching and research focuses on resilient and sustainable food systems, food policy and food security. One of Rachel’s key research interests is the resilience and sustainability of city food systems in the face of growing challenges from climate change, pandemic, population growth, urban sprawl and from declining supplies of natural resources, such as land and water. Rachel leads the Foodprint Melbourne research project, which is investigating approaches to strengthen the resilience of Melbourne’s food system to shocks and stresses and the role of Melbourne’s foodbowl in increasing the resilience of the city’s food supply.
Dr. Tammara Soma, MCIP RPP, is an Associate Professor at the School of Resource and Environmental Management (Planning program) at Simon Fraser University and Research Director of the Food Systems Lab. She is also the Faculty Lead on the Simon Fraser University–Aga Khan University, Arusha Climate Environmental Research partnership in Tanzania. She conducts research on issues pertaining to food loss and waste, food systems planning, food security and food systems resiliency, Indigenous food sovereignty, and the circular food economy in Canada and globally. She is routinely featured in international and local media on various food-related issues (The Guardian, CBC, TVO, CTV, National Observer, Chatelaine, etc.) and is the co-director/co-writer of the CBC documentary “Food is My Teacher.” Dr. Soma was selected as a committee member of the US National Academies of Sciences and co-authored the consensus study A National Strategy to Reduce Consumer Food Waste. She also served on the expert panel of the Council of Canadian Academies’ report on “Atypical Food Production Technologies for Canadian Food Security.” Most recently she was selected as a UN expert panel to be on the drafting team of a report on “Building Resilient Food Systems.” Dr. Soma is the co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Food Waste and has been published in various academic journals including in Journal of American Planning Association, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Agriculture Human Values, Journal of Cleaner Production, and more. Dr. Soma is a registered professional planner with the Canadian Institute of Planners.