Lenore Newman

Lenore Newman is a Canadian author and geographer. She is Associate Professor of Geography and the Environment at the University of the Fraser Valley and Director of the Food and Agriculture Institute. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Food Security and the Environment.

Newman was born in Sechelt, a coastal town in British Columbia, and raised in a fishing family. She attended the University of British Columbia, where she received a BSc (Hons), and then completed an MES and PhD at York University.

Newman studies agricultural and culinary geography. She has conducted fieldwork around the globe, studying public markets, regional cuisines, farmland preservation, global food security, and the ecology of the world’s food system. As Canada Research Chair in Food Security and the Environment she researches the impact of climate change on food security and global cuisines. She has published over forty peer-reviewed academic articles in her area of research. In 2014, Newman was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada's College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Her first book, Speaking in Cod Tongues: A Canadian Culinary Journey, was published in 2017 by the University of Regina Press. It explores regional food cultures across Canada, ultimately arguing for the existence of a distinctly Canadian cuisine and outlining the properties that define it.

Her second book, Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food was published in 2019 by ECW Press. It explores the foods that humans have eaten to extinction.

Newman currently researches technology and the future of food, agricultural land use policy, and place making through food and agriculture. In 2018 she was appointed to a government committee to strengthen the Agricultural Land Reserve in British Columbia. In 2019 she was appointed to a Food Security Task Force with the mandate to advise the government on ways to apply technology and innovation to support the agricultural sector in British Columbia and to reduce food waste.

• Speaking in Cod Tongues: A Canadian Culinary Journey. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2017.
• Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food. Toronto: ECW Press, 2019.