Anthony Musiwa, Community Food Centres Canada (he/his)
Anthony Musiwa, PhD, is the senior policy advisor in Community Food Centres Canada’s Poverty Action Unit, Banting Postdoctoral Fellow in McMaster’s Department of Health Services Research, Evidence, and Impact, as well as a member of the Centre for Research on Children and Families at McGill University. Anthony locates his policy, practice, and research work at the intersections of poverty, maternal and child healthcare, and child welfare. More specifically, his work addresses the impacts of public policies on access to basic services among children and families in resource-limited contexts. Anthony’s work has received competitive awards from agencies like the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Fonds de recherche du Québec–Société et culture, and the International Development Research Centre. Throughout his work, Anthony leverages his interdisciplinary training in social work, law, policy research, and development studies received in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Zimbabwe.
Carol McGregor (she/her)
Mother, grandmother, traditional Chief, Kanien’kehá:ka from Kahnawà:ke.
Brady H. Weiler (he/him)
Brady H. Weiler brings over forty years of food and hospitality experience—accompanied by a unique skillset. Raised in Edmonton, he developed an interest in food and cooking at an early age. His lifelong passion for food led him to work at a local sandwich shop at the age of twelve, progressing to “popcorn guy” at the Coliseum and taking all three years of his high school work experience to the Four Seasons Hotel in Edmonton. He later went on to be an executive chef in the Cayman Islands.
A few years after returning to Canada, Brady opened the Pipestone Food Company at the age of 31 in Wetaskiwin, which operated for seventeen years as a fine dining restaurant, Irish pub and catering service. Brady went on to represent a local farm that offered all-natural and hormone-free meat products. This facilitated his relationships with the Maskwacîs Education Schools Commission (MESC) as a vendor. As an industry professional, he was curious and skeptical of the claims that this program was feeding kids for under a dollar per day.
As luck would have it, he is now the director of this amazing program.
Elaine Power, Queen’s University (she/her)
Elaine Power is a Professor in the School of Kinesiology & Health Studies at Queen’s University. Dr. Power earned her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2002. She is a cultural studies scholar whose research looks at the intersections between food, health and income, with a particular interest in food insecurity. She is a founding member of the Kingston Action Group for a Basic Income Guarantee and co-author of the book, The Case for Basic Income: Freedom, Security, Justice (BTL Press, 2021). Currently, Dr. Power is working with a small team of scholars and artists to create a graphic novel introducing children and youth to the systemic and structural factors underlying food insecurity and encouraging them to consider solutions beyond the traditional charity model.
François Fournier, Observatoire québécois des inégalités (he/him)
François Fournier has a master’s degree in political science and a doctorate in sociology. Rather than specializing in a single field of study, François acts as a generalist who follows his curiosity. He has conducted varied qualitative and documentary research projects, particularly with vulnerable populations. Through his research career he has had the chance to work as a senior analyst on a diversity of social issues in university and human rights settings and for two important public inquiry commissions in Quebec.
François has been a researcher at l’Observatoire québécois des inégalités for over three years. His research interests include inequalities in basic needs (food insecurity) and the determinants of social mobility (educational inequalities), both considered through an intersectional lens. He also coordinates an education project on inequalities which is intended to raise awareness about social disparities, their consequences and their structural causes with both secondary school students and the general public.
Irena Knezevic (she/her)
Event co-organizer.
Irena Knezevic is an associate professor in communication, culture and health at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where she co-directs the Food and Media Hub research initiative. Most of her work is community-based and focuses on food systems, health communication, equity, and the discourse around food and health. Irena is a co-editor of the 2022 textbook, Food Studies: Matter, Meaning, Movement. She has taught food studies at collegial and university levels and currently holds the 2022-25 Carleton University Chair in Teaching Innovation.
Jocelyne Gamache, Regroupement des cuisines collectives du Québec (she/her)
Jocelyne Gamache is the general coordinator of the Regroupement des cuisines collectives du Québec (RCCQ), an organisation that promotes the creation, growth and coordination of collective kitchens in Quebec. Prior to joining the RCCQ in 2019, she contributed the skills she acquired from her education in political science within a variety of roles in community groups working with people in vulnerable situations. In particular, she was involved in defending the rights of people on social assistance in Montreal, as well as working at organizations involved the field of early childhood development and in supporting individuals with learning disabilities.
Since beginning at RCCQ, she has set up a committee working to draft a framework law on the right to food. Jocelyne is passionate about movements that mobilize people around civic demands and about the right to food for all people.
Joshua Smee, Food First NL (he/him)
Joshua Smee is the CEO of Food First NL, a provincial non-profit organization that works with communities across Newfoundland & Labrador to advance the right to food and to further their vision of a province where everyone can eat with joy and dignity.
Passionate about systems change and the power of collective action, Joshua has taken a leading role in many coalitions and campaigns. He co-chairs the provincial Food Security Working Group with the Government of NL, is a lead organizer for Basic Income NL, and sat on the province’s Health Accord Task Force.
Outside of work, Joshua sits on many boards and committees and has been heavily engaged in work around civic engagement, local food and the arts.
Leslie Touré Kapo, Institut national de la recherche scientifique (he/him)
Leslie Touré Kapo is a Professor at the Centre Urbanisation Culture Société of the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS). Dr. Kapo’s research interests focus on urban studies, youth studies, critical race theory, and gender and sexuality. He specifically explores how racialization processes impact the everyday life of youth in low-income and immigrant neighbourhoods. Dr. Kapo’s dissertation focused on the everyday and ordinary lives of young, racialized individuals in Montreal. He co-wrote the report on “Access to Local Food in Francophone Canada: Antiracist and Decolonial Perspectives,” and he is a member of the Pan-African Canadian Food Sovereignty Network.
Myriam Durocher, University of Amsterdam (she/her)
Event co-organizer.
Myriam Durocher is a SSHRC funded postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), in the Department of Anthropology (Health, Care and the Body Programme Group). Her research interests revolve around critically addressing the power relationships that are negotiated in Quebec/Canada’s food culture so as to initiate constructive change towards more just (more sustainable, inclusive, less normative) food cultures and food systems. Her current community-engaged research looks at the process of a Quebec food community group, the Regroupement des cuisines collectives du Québec, as it develops a framework bill on the right to food.
Rachel Engler-Stringer, University of Saskatchewan (she/her)
Rachel Engler-Stringer is a Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology in the College of Medicine at the University of Saskatchewan and a researcher with the Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit. She has a doctorate in nutrition, and her research interests include community food security, food environments and food access, food system sustainability, health promotion, and community-based and participatory research. More recently, Dr. Engler-Stringer’s research has focused on school food programs and the ways they can help us reconnect with food production and create more sustainable local food systems. Dr. Engler-Stringer has advocated for a national Canadian school food program for many years, and she is currently the co-lead of an interdisciplinary research group working to inform federal decision-making on a national school food program.
Shylah Wolfe, Concordia Food Coalition (she/her)
Shylah Wolfe is a professionally trained chef and community organizer. Before becoming the Executive Director at Concordia Food Coalition, she co-managed a small organic farm, cooked at the Hive Café Co-op, coordinated CHNGR MTL (“Changer Montréal”) and was the Project Manager at Local Food and Farm Co-operative.
Tabitha Robin, University of British Columbia (she/her)
Event co-organizer.
Tabitha Robin is a mixed ancestry Métis and Cree researcher, educator and writer. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. Dr. Robin earned her PhD at the University of Manitoba, where she examined the role of food in Cree helping and healing practices. Her research explores the processes and practices of Indigenous food systems, particularly factors that affect Indigenous peoples’ food sovereignty.
Tiff-Annie Kenny, Université Laval (she/her)
Tiff-Annie Kenny is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social and Preventive Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine at Université Laval and a researcher at the Centre de recherche du CHU de Québec. Her research employs participatory and systems-based methodologies to examine social and ecological determinants of health, with a focus on food security, nutrition and chronic disease among Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Over the past ten years, Dr. Kenny has collaborated with Indigenous communities across northern and coastal regions in Canada to investigate the effects of climate change on food security and health, exploring the strategies put in place by these communities to support resilient food systems.