Prof. Cecilia Rocha

Cecilia Rocha (PhD, Economics) is an Associate Professor in the School of Nutrition, and Associate Researcher and past Director (2005-2010) of the Centre for Studies in Food Security at Ryerson.

Her research interests are on assessing the social efficiency of food security initiatives and programs, the role of market failures in food insecurity, and the effectiveness of markets as policy tools.

From 2004 to 2010, Rocha was the Director of the project Building Capacity in Food Security in Brazil, developed in partnership with the Reference Centre for Food and Nutrition Security in Rio de Janeiro, and funded by the Canadian International Development Agency.

She has authored some of the key papers on the innovative and pioneering policies and programs in food security in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and has been an invited speaker at many international meetings, such as the 2009 United Nations High Level Meeting on Food Security for All in Madrid, Spain, and the 2009 Parliamentary Meeting on the Occasion of the World Food Summit in Rome, Italy.

Dr. Rocha was an active member of the Toronto Food Policy Council from 2006 to 2011, and participated in the development of the Toronto Food Strategy (2009-2010). She has conducted research on food security conditions among immigrant populations in Toronto, and the manifestation of food sovereignty in an indigenous settlement in Brazil.

In 2012 she was invited to be part of a distinguished expert panel on the State of Knowledge of Food Security in Northern Canada by the Council of Canadian Academies.

For more information please visit here.