“By the end of my Master’s degree in Public Administration at Queen’s University around 2005, food and hunger in Canada presented me with dilemmas and questions that I wanted to confront in my future research and teaching. I was concluding a Master’s research project about community-based, after-school programs and their ability to reduce risky behavior in young people. While listening from program administrators throughout Ontario who was passionate about young people’s well-being in their communities, food emerged as a consistent theme: Hunger is a barrier to learning. Hunger can motivate and aggravate destructive behaviors. Why has this affluent country not done something systemic about problems of domestic poverty and hunger? Unlike several more developed countries, Canada has never implemented a universal, nation-wide school meal program that would provide all children with healthy, delicious, filling meals. Rather than pursue a state-driven approach, a patchwork quilt of volunteers in schools, community groups, and charities all over this country do this work. I became a social scientist by considering this dilemma over and over to this day: Loving volunteer efforts to feed children undoubtedly add to the social fabric of their communities; is the charitable sector the most appropriate domain of society to take on the problem of child hunger? When poverty is systemic, what are the limits to this approach? What would it take for Canadians to compel their government to invest in a sustainable, universal approach to eliminating poverty and child hunger?”

Melanie will draw on her expertise in urban food systems, social justice theory and practice, innovation and prosperity in post-industrial cities and urban food policy to teach courses in introductory human geography, urban geography, economic geography, globalization, and sustainable cities.

Melanie earned a Ph.D. in Human Geography at Queen’s University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Ottawa. Melanie joined the Faculty of Science after teaching for four years at Quest University in Squamish, British Columbia. Away from McMaster, Melanie cooks and bakes nearly every day while ideally watching reruns of the Great British Bake Off. Together with her spouse and son, Melanie is also exploring Hamilton and the Golden Horseshoe.