UNIVERSITY OF THE FRASER VALLEY
Centre for Global Development
Biography
Cherie Enns is a passionate educator and urban planner focusing on spatial justice, child rights, human-centred design, food systems, placemaking, sustainable land use planning, climate change and humanitarian responses to facilitate the transformation to more equitable and inclusive communities. She is also a registered professional planner and a member of the Canadian Institute of Planners. Her Ph.D. is in Public Policy Analysis and Programme Management (IArdhi University, Tanzania) and Masters in Community and Regional Planning (UBC, Canada).
Biography
Dr. Satwinder Kaur Bains is the Director of the South Asian Studies Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley and an Associate Professor in Social Cultural Media Studies, College of Arts. Dr. Bains' critical analysis of India's multilingual policy and planning has fueled her interest to study the impact of language, culture and identity on South Asian Canadian migration, settlement, and integration. Her research includes and intersects cross-cultural education with a focus on anti-racist curriculum implementation; race, racism, and ethnicity; identity politics; Sikh feminist ideology; migration and the South Asian Canadian Diaspora and Punjabi Canadian cultural historiography. Satwinder has extensive professional experience in community development and has worked with organizations in the area of cross-cultural mental health, immigrant women, youth and families and board development, diversity, equity, inclusion, cross cultural development, women's rights and socio-religious interfaith dialogue.
Biography
Dr. Mariano Mapili is an Associate Professor in Agriculture Biogeography at the School of Land Use and Environmental Change, in the University of the Fraser Valley. His experience in the Philippines includes being Assistant Director for Extension and Training, in-charge of a project on BIDANI (Barangay Integrated Development Action for Nutrition Improvement), where the relationship of food insecurity and community development was front and centre. As an immigrant to Canada, he has first-hand experience on how the immigrant community impact food security. Dr. Mapili is spear-heading a research project on improving food security in the Fraser Valley through crop diversification using tropical agriculture in Fraser Valley community gardens. The project is in collaboration with three agricultural universities in the Philippines, a project that brings his agriculture biogeography and food security together.
Biography
Lenore Newman is the Director of the Food and Agriculture Institute at the University of the Fraser Valley where she specializes in agricultural innovation and policy. She holds a research chair in food and agriculture innovation and is a past Canada Research Chair in Food Security and the Environment. She is an associate professor in the School of Land Use and Environmental Change and is an emeritus member of the Royal Society of Canada's New College.
Biography
Educated at the University of Toronto, Dr. Mooney has an honours BA in Anthropology and Religious Studies, a master's degree in Museum Studies, and a doctorate in Anthropology; she also completed the collaborative doctoral program in Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies. Before arriving at UFV, she taught at Mount Allison, Trent, and Wilfrid Laurier universities, as well as at the University of Toronto. At Mount Allison, where she remains adjunct professor, she was the first McCain Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Anthropology. Her book, Rural Nostalgias and Transnational Dreams: Identity and Modernity among Jat Sikhs (University of Toronto Press 2011), broadly concerns ethnicity, urbanization, and migration, and their impacts on Jat Sikh society, history, and memory; it also examines the influences of gender, class, religion, and other forms of social difference, as well as the nation-state, postcoloniality, and modernity, on Jat Sikh identities. She has also published a number of papers and chapters pertaining to identity, gender, caste, religion, cultural poetics and popular culture in Punjabi and diaspora contexts. Her current research projects are broadly focused on landscape, caste, gender, religion, enchantment, and food and environmental practices.
Biography
Dr. Geetanjali Gill has carried out academic studies in Development Studies at the University of Toronto, London School of Economics and Political Science (UK), and University of Sussex (UK). She has taught development studies courses at the University of Sussex (UK), Simon Fraser University (International Studies department), and Kwantlen Polytechnic University (Anthropology department). Geetanjali has also worked for more than 16 years as an international development practitioner and researcher in the UK, Canada, Sub-Saharan Africa, and South Asia, working with research institutions, non-governmental organizations, international organizations, donors, and governments. She continues to collaborate as a scholar-practitioner with organizations such as BC Council for International Cooperation, Right to Play International, Help Age International, Canadian Foodgrains Bank, British Council, United Nations, and Archway Community Services.