Jayeeta (Jo) Sharma

Biography: Jo (Jayeeta) Sharma (Cantab 2002) is an Associate Professor of Food Studies, History, and Environmental Humanities, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and with Professor Marney Isaac, (co)Director of the Sustainable Food & Farming Cluster at the University of Toronto. She  leads the Feeding City interdisciplinary lab which conducts local-global food sovereignty and community-engaged sustainability research. She is a co-editor of the journal Global Food History (Routledge). She is also co-editor of the Culinaria food book series at the University of Toronto Press, and editor of the Empires in Perspective book series (Routledge). She is a founding member of the Culinaria Research Centre at the University of Toronto and an elected Board Member of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS). She is part of the Scarborough Food Network, a network that brings together local community organizations that work on food security and food advocacy issues. She is also a member of the Commonwealth Scholarship Alumni Association.

Jo’s historical and contemporary research ranges across interdisciplinary themes and transnational spaces connected to food and foodways, empires, post-colonial and global Asia diasporas, mountain ecologies and societies, food systems and plantation labour, street vendors, commodity capitalism, and historical soundscapes of city food. She is the author of Empire’s Garden (Duke/Permanent Black 2011/OEAP Library 2017). She is currently working on two books: the first is Mountains of Empire, and the second is The Sonic Streets: A Global History of Street Food Sounds and Culinary Infrastructure.  She is PI and co-PI for several global research projects, including a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, a SSHRC Connections Outreach Grant, and a SSHRC Insight Development Grant. Projects’ details can be found here: https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/projects/feedingcity/toward-food-sovereignty/