BALSILLIE SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Jonathan Crush
Jonathan Crush was raised in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Swaziland. After obtaining his first degree at Cambridge University, he moved to Canada and completed his M.A. at Wilfrid Laurier University and Ph.D. at Queen’s University. Jonathan is a frequent commentator on issues of migration, food security and xenophobia in the Global South and has consulted for the IOM, ILO, UNDP, UNAIDS, UNESCO, CIDA-CIC, OECD and various African governments.
Zhenzhong Si
Dr. Zhenzhong Si is the Project Research Manager of the MiFOOD Project. He holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Waterloo. Through the Hungry Cities Partnership, Zhenzhong investigates the dynamics of urban food systems in Nanjing, China with a particular focus on the role of wet markets in urban food security and its interactions with modern food outlets, household food security status and policies for food provisioning. Zhenzhong also leads the SSHRC Partnership Development Grant project that studies agroecology’s potential for achieving the SDGs, and the SSHRC-funded project on COVID-19’s impacts on food security in China and the CIHR-funded project on assessing and mitigating impacts of COVID-19 on food security in marginalized communities in Canada, South Africa and Ecuador. He published papers in development and agrifood themed journals and co-authored the book Organic Food and Farming in China: Top-down and Bottom-up Ecological Initiatives.
Zack Ahmed
Zack Ahmed is a PhD candidate in the Global Governance program at the Balsillie School of International Affairs where he focuses his research on the south-south migration and food (in)security nexus. Zack completed the Master of International Public Policy Program at WLU in the 2020-2021 academic year where his interest in food security grew through a research project he completed on the impact of COVID-19 on women along the food supply chain in the global South. Zack is currently working on two projects: 1) a SSHRC funded research project that asses Somali migrant households’ food security situation in Nairobi; and 2) a CIHR funded research that aims to assess the household food security of refugees from Somalia in the Kitchener-Waterloo region.
Jenna Hennebry
Jenna Hennebry is a Professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Coordinator of the Women and Gender Studies Program, and Associate Dean of the School of International Policy and Governance at Wilfrid Laurier University. She is Co-Founder of the International Migration Research Centre and the Migration Worker Health Project, and Founder of the Gender+Migration Hub funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. Jenna has carried out globally comparative research on labour migration governance, gender and migrant worker rights and health, for over 15 years. She has consulted for UN Women, IOM, UNODC, and multiple government agencies. Her work has been funded by national and international agencies and governments, and it has been published in English and Spanish in journals such as International Migration, the Journal on International Migration and Integration, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, among others. Her work has informed policy recommendations for gender-responsive and rights-based approaches to labour migration governance at local, provincial, national, regional and international levels.
Sujata Ramachandran
Dr. Sujata Ramachandran is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs with the SSHRC-funded MiFOOD Project. She received her PhD in Human Geography from Wilfrid Laurier University. Sujata has extensive experience studying various aspects of migration in Canada, Southern Africa and South Asia. Her research interests include migration and development, migrant integration, and migration governance. As part of her postdoctoral research, Sujata will conduct a study on South-South migration to India for the MiFOOD Project.
Margaret Walton-Roberts
Dr. Margaret Walton-Roberts is a human geographer trained in the UK and Canada who focuses on international migration. She is currently a professor at Wilfrid Laurier University and the Balsillie School of International Affairs, Waterloo Canada. Her research interests are in gender and migration, transnational networks, and immigrant settlement. Current research continues with an international research team funded through a SSHRC insight grant to examine global nurse migration pathways between India-Canada, Philippines-Singapore, and Vietnam-Germany. She has been awarded several external grants for her research, and has published over 34 book chapters, and more than 46 journal articles. Her latest co-edited book A National Project: Canada’s Syrian Refugee Resettlement Experience will be published with McGill-Queens University Press in summer 2020. Her most recent research grant examine Global Nurse Migration Pathways.
Mercedes Eguiguren
Mercedes Eguiguren is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Inequalities, at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (Ecuador) and a Visiting Researcher at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, working on the MiFOOD Project. Her research interests focus on the relationships between mobility, socio-spatial inequalities and the subjective experience of migration. She has researched and published on the links between international and internal migration, aspirations and social imaginaries as drivers of migration, the migration-development nexus, the contemporary history of Ecuadorian migration, and migration policy and political narratives. She serves as the co-chair of LASA’s Ecuadorian Studies Section, 2022–2024.