Tony Weis

Professor

Tony Weis

Contact Information

Office: Room 1403, SSC
Tel: 519 661-2111, 87472
E-mail: aweis@uwo.ca

Research Areas

Global agro-food systems, industrial agriculture (especially livestock production), political ecology

Research Interests

My research is broadly located in the field of political ecology, with a focus on the power, inequalities, and biophysical instabilities associated with globalized agriculture and food systems, including the explicit and implicit (environmental externalities) subsidies that brace the competitiveness of industrial production. Over the past decade this work has centered most of all on the transformations associated with the industrial grain-oilseed-livestock complex and the soaring scale of animal consumption, and the momentous implications for the environment, food security, and inter-species relations this entails.

Personal Website

Teaching

GEO 1200 – The Climate Emergency (new in 2020)

GEO 2156 – Animal Geographies

GEO 3441 – Conservation and Development

GEO 3445 – Global Agriculture and Food Systems

GEO 9330 – Agriculture and Rural Development

Supervised Graduate Students and Theses Titles

PhD Students

  • R. Bloomfield (Current) Political economy of agro-food systems. Examining current farmland policy, ownership dynamics, and alternative land-use models to support next or first-generation farmers in Ontario
  • H. Peacock (joint-supervised) (Current) A global GIS analysis of primate diversity and biogeography: Assessing trends in habitat loss and extinction risk to information primate conservation biology
  • M. Sinel (Current) T.B.D.
  • R. Ellis (2021) Pollinator People: an ethnography of bees, bee advocates and possibilities for multispecies commoning in Toronto and London, ON
  • S. Vercillo (joint-supervised) (2018) The Differentiation of Smaller Farming and Household Food Responsibilities in Northern Ghana
  • S. McFarlane-Morris (joint-supervised) (2017) A Political Ecology of Mass Tourism Development on the Jamaican North Coast
  • B. Vogel (joint-supervised) (2016) The Case of Multi-Level Governance and Municipal Adaption
  • M. Steckley (2015) Agrarian Change and Peasant Prospects in Haiti
  • K. Ross (2014) Divergent Responses to Tropical Commodity Dependence after the demise of EU-ACP Preferential Trade

Masters Students

  • S. Phillips (2020) Can community gardens improve food banks? Lessons from Southwestern Ontario
  • E. Galley (2011) Remaking a Forestry Town: The Multifaceted Challenges of Transition in Port Alberni, BC
  • A. Al-khoury (2010) The Struggle to Get Back to the Land: New Farmers and Agriculture in Ontario
  • C. Hickey (2010) Adapting to Climate Change in Guyana: Necessities, Options and Constraints
  • A. Park (2010) The Iwokrama Challenge: Balancing Conservation and Development in Guyana
  • L. Riley (joint-supervised) (2008) Children's Geography and the Everyday Lives of Orphans in Malawi

Publications

Refereed Journals

Ellis, B., Weis, T., Surayanaman, S. and Beilin, K (2020) From a free gift of nature to a precarious commodity: Bees, pollination services, and industrial agriculture. Journal of Agrarian Change. doi: 10.1111/joac.12360

Authored Books

Weis, T. 2013 The Ecological Hoofprint: The Global Burden of Industrial Livestock (London and New York: Zed Books).

Weis, T. 2007 The Global Food Economy: The Battle for the Future of Farming (London and New York: Zed Books).

Edited Books

Edelman, M., J.C. Scott, A. Baviskar, S.M. Borras Jr., E. Holt-Gimenez, D. Kandiyoti, T. Weis, and W. Wolford (eds.) (2015) Critical Perspectives on Food Sovereignty (London and New York: Routledge).

Black, T., S. D’Arcy, T. Weis, and J. Kahn-Russell (eds.) (2014) A Line in the Tar Sands: Struggles for Environmental Justice (Toronto and New York.Between the Lines and PM Press).