Research Chairs

UFV  is home to four accomplished Research Chair holders:

Lenore Newman
Canada Research Chair in Food Security and the Environment

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	Lenore Newman

The University of the Fraser Valley has a new federally funded researcher on campus. Dr. Lenore Newman was recently appointed Canada Research Chair in Food Security and Environment and joins the Geography department at UFV.

Newman comes to UFV from Royal Roads University in Victoria, where was an assistant professor in the School of Environment and Sustainability, and head of the Master of Environmental Management program.
Her research interests include food security; sustainable food systems/urban food systems; place, space, and urban nature; and urban spatial geography.

Newman holds a PhD and a master’s degree, both in environmental studies, from York University, and a BSc (honours) in physics and astronomy from the University of British Columbia. She has travelled extensively and developed a strong interest in sustainability partly as a result of those travels.

As part of her appointment, Newman will be investigating Canada’s foodways, or how food defines Canadians and their culture. She will also be looking at environmental and social threats to food sustainability. The location of UFV in rural zone at the edge of a growing metropolis provides a perfect living laboratory for her research.

She says that there are three main threats to Canadian food sustainability: climate change, urban land pressures, and the disappearance of wild environments. As for what defines a Canadian cuisine, she says that it is based on wild foods and an enthusiastic integration of immigrant culture and foods.

Newman will be crossing the country finding “foods of locality”, talking to food producers and chefs, and recording her research through film and still photography, along with other methods.

She will also be looking at the Fraser Valley and its connection to food production and the competing demands of agriculture, urbanization, and the wilderness needed to sustain wild foods such as B.C. salmon. She says that the collapse of a food source affects a region in many ways.

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	Hugh Brody

Hugh Brody
Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Studies

UFV's commitment to fostering research related to Aboriginal topics received a huge boost when the university was awarded a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Studies by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).  The award allows UFV to build on existing interdisciplinary collaboration in various aspects of Aboriginal studies involving the departments of history, geography, anthropology, sociology, criminal justice, visual arts, and social work.

Professor Hugh Brody is leading an ambitious program of research on the role played by Aboriginal youth in the development of their communities. Brody's work in Aboriginal communities is helping to teach a new generation to do research for themselves and their communities - helping them to tell their own stories.

Brody's research includes a number of multidisciplinary and multimedia projects, including one with young Aboriginal people in the Fraser Valley. The work seeks to better understand how young men and women in Sto:lo communities define the value of their lives. As a comparative anthropologist, Hugh Brody's work has taken him around the globe. He has studied land use issues related to the Hai-kom Bushmen in Namibia, Africa; researched the economic impact of hydro projects on the Nez Perce Tribe in Idaho, and examined the social, economic and cultural losses due to resettlement of tribal communities in India.

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	DJ Sandhu

DJ Sandhu
Chair on Canada-India Business and Economic Development

As BC Regional Innovation Chair on Canada-India Business and Economic Development, DJ Sandhu serves as an influential resource for decision makers and Canadian businesspeople, including those who are familiar with the Indian market and those who want to break into it.  He also sits on UFV's Indo-Canadian Advisory Committee. He earned his BBA and MBA at Simon Fraser University and in April 2009, Sandhu was appointed the B.C. in-market business investment and skills liaison representative by BC Premier Gordon Campbell.

Sandhu brings more than 20 years of marketing teaching experience to this position, as well as a strong background in marketing consulting for Fortune 500 companies such as Johnson & Johnson. He has extensive experience developing international markets and launching and running companies involved in financing new manufacturing ventures. In 2006, he helped UFV become the only Canadian post-secondary institution to establish an education society – along with a new campus – in India. The Society is a platform available for other post-secondary institutions to use to launch their programs in India without having to collaborate directly with an Indian partner.

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	Dr. Darryl Plecas

Dr. Darryl Plecas
RCMP University Research Chair in Crime Reduction

Dr. Plecas holds the RCMP University Research Chair in Crime Reduction in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice at UFV, where he has worked for 28 years, serving as Chair of the School for various over 14 of those years.  He is the author or co-author of more than 100 research reports, international journal articles and other publications addressing a broad range of criminal justice issues. 
 
He holds two degrees in Criminology from Simon Fraser University and a doctorate in Higher Education from the University of British Columbia.  In the summer of 1995, he completed the Management Development Program in the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University.