Evan Fraser is Director of Arrell Food Institute and a professor of geography at the University of Guelph. He is a global leader in understanding agri-food technology, climate change, and the future of food and one of Canada’s most cited scientists actively working on food and sustainability. To date, Fraser has published approximately 150 academic papers and book chapters, raised over $100M in research funding and supervised around 50 Masters / PhD students and post-doctoral research associates. He was a Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security (2014–2020), a fellow of the Pierre Elliot Trudeau Foundation (2014–2017) and is a fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society and an alumnus member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars.
Evan Fraser’s non-academic writings have appeared in dozens of outlets including CNN and the Guardian. His 2010 book, Empires of Food: Feast, Famine and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, was shortlisted for the James Beard Food Literature Award and his 2020 book, Uncertain Harvest, was awarded an honourable mention by the Science Writers of Canada. His 2022 book Dinner on Mars was co-authored with Lenore Newman. He sits on numerous boards that advise government, industry, and charities. This includes co-chairing the Canadian Food Policy Advisory Council, which provides advice to the Federal Cabinet on the implementation of Canada’s Food Policy. He is also the vice-chair the Maple Leaf Centre for Action on Food Security that is a major funder of charitable food security work in Canada. Other past and present board roles include being a member of the European Commission’s high level expert group on food system science, chairing George Weston Ltd.’s Seeding Food Innovation scientific steering committee, and participating on scientific advisory boards for Genome Quebec, Protein Industries Canada and the University of the Fraser Valley’s Food and Agriculture Institute.
He is a national of Canada and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
