Team Leads
Jo Sharma
Associate Professor, University of Toronto
Jo (Jayeeta) Sharma is an Associate Professor at the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences (DPES) at the University of Toronto. Her research ranges across interdisciplinary themes and transnational spaces connected to mountain environments, commodity capitalism, food labour, city foods, street vending, heirloom crops, seed conservation, urban growing, migrant foodscapes, & agrobiodiversity. She is the author of Empire’s Garden (Duke 2011; Permanent Black 2012; Knowledge Unlatched 2017) and Mountains of Empire (California 2025).She is a founding-member of the university’s Culinaria Research Centre. Jo holds graduate appointments at the Department of History, the School of Environment, the Department for the Study of Religion, and the Asian Institute. She is also a faculty affiliate of the University of Toronto India Foundation, the School of Cities, the Centre for the Study of South Asian Critical Humanities (SCACH), and the SDGs Scholars Academy. She is the founder-director of the Feeding City Lab and co-director of the Sustainable Food and Farming Futures Cluster of Scholarly Prominence. Jo is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS). She co-edits the Culinaria food book series for the University of Toronto Press. Her other academic collaborations in the field of food studies include the University of Bologna and University College London.
Jaclyn Rohel
Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Toronto Scarborough
Jackie brings an applied interdisciplinary approach to her work on urban food provisioning, with a focus on community-engaged research and experiential education. She has contributed to Feeding City since 2020, jointly leading research, knowledge mobilization, and pedagogical activities in areas such as community food supports, emergency foodways, markets, and multimedia. She is also a member of Gastronomica’s Editorial Collective, where she works with the journal’s creative cluster and produces and co-hosts the Gastronomica podcast series on the Heritage Radio Network. Jackie has a PhD in Food Studies from New York University, and has held fellowships in community-engaged humanities research and new media at the Jackman Humanities Institute at the University of Toronto.
Current Research Assistants and Interns
Aparna Menon (graduate)
Daphne Berberyan
Emma Wan
Geetha Sukumaran (graduate)
Jasleen Sohal
Jyotshana Chaileyndrachankar
Mohini Mehta (graduate)
Paula Almudena Varela
Yang Jing Zheng
Ysa Tandingan
Former Research Associates
Dr. Bryan Dale (2020-2021)
Dr. Joel Dickau (2022-2023)
Dr. Noah Allison (2021-2023)
Dr. Siera Vercillo (2022-2023)
Former Research Assistants
Adam Bishop (2021-2023)
Amber McNeil (2021-2023)
Amira Namasivayam (2020)
Angela Gong (2020)
Bavan Pushpalingam (2023)
Bethany Wong (2021-2022)
Madeleine Frechette (2020-2023)
Cheryl Cheung (2020-2022)
Chantelle DeCunha (2021)
Dora Latalisa (2021)
Eileen Chen (2021)
Eleonora Gagliardi (2020)
Fatima Varayuri (2023)
Hannah Klemmensen (2020-2022)
Jaime Rosenfeld (2020-2022)
Jeffrey Liu (2020-2021)
Joseph Cammisuli (2020)
Juan Lloren (2020)
Laurie Courtney-Brooke (2020)
Lindsay Goodridge (2020-2021)
Lynne Chia (2020)
Matilda Dipieri (2020-2022)
Nida Mizra (2020)
Olivia Rodrigo (2020-2023)
Patrick Ren (2021-2022)
Qi Annnie Liu (2021)
Rayah Flash (2021-2024)
Ruth Siew (2020)
Sebastian Rojas (2021)
Serena Yuan (2021-2024)
Shathvahi Ramesh (2021-2023)
Shirin Arghandeh (2020)
Stella-Luna Ha (2020)
Sterling Stutz (2020)
Yusra Khalid (2020-2021)
Yianni Pantis (2021-2022)