Faculty Member
Sarah Elton
- Email Address(es)
- sarah.elton(at)utoronto.ca
- Division(s)/Institute(s)
- Social & Behavioural Health Sciences Division
- Position
- Assistant Professor
- SGS Status
- Associate Member
- Appointment Status
- Tenure Stream
Research Interests:
- Food systems, including urban food systems, sustainability in the context of climate change and environmental degradation, as well as food sovereignty and justice
- Ecological approaches to public health
- Posthumanist theory, multispecies and more-than-human approaches, critical plant studies, and qualitative research with microbes
- Critical qualitative research methodologies
Biography:
Sarah Elton is an Assistant Professor in Social and Behavioural Health Sciences and Eakin Chair in Critical Qualitative Health Research Methodology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Her transdisciplinary research investigates food system impacts on human health and ecosystems drawing on critical qualitative health research methodologies. She works across the food system studying: produce supply chains in the context of climate change and food access; socio-ecological food systems of urban gardens; and the human gut microbiome from a social science perspective. These research projects have been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).
Her single and co-authored articles are published in journals including Social Science and Medicine, Environmental Humanities, Gastronomica, Food, Culture & Society, Journal of Rural Studies, the Canadian Journal of Public Health, and Contexts which is a journal of the American Sociological Association. In 2021, she was the first qualitative researcher to be recognized by the Gairdner Foundation when she won a Gairdner Early Career Investigator Award. Previous to her academic career, Sarah worked as a journalist and author. She worked in radio at the CBC and wrote magazine and newspaper articles, as well as the bestselling books Locavore and Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet.
Dr. Elton collaborates with student research assistants on all her projects and has supervised graduate students researching in the following areas:
- posthuman and crip theories and methodologies
- food system resilience
- ecological public health
Academic background
- 2015-2019: PhD, Social and Behavioural Health Sciences, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto
- 2019-2024: Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Toronto Metropolitan University
Recognitions
- 2021 Gairdner Foundation Early Career Investigator Award
- 2020 Joan Eakin Award for Methodological Excellence in a Doctoral Dissertation, Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research, University of Toronto
- 2014 American Library Association CHOICE Magazine Outstanding Academic Title Award for Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
- 2010 Gold Medal Non-fiction, Canadian Culinary Book Awards for Locavore: From Farmers’ Fields to Rooftop Gardens, How Canadians Are Changing the Way We Eat (Harper Collins Canada, 2010)
For a current list of scholarly publications, see Google Scholar