Relationships with Other-than-human life in Ontario Foodscapes

Presentations and Publications

June 3-5, 2025: Lightning Talk and Gallery at the Canadian Association of Food Studies conference (Congress conference)

Canadian Association of Food Studies Conference Gallery Piece

This work features photography gathered as part of a seasonal qualitative study led by artist-researcher, Josalyn Radcliffe, who engaged in seasonal go-along interviews with participants in their growing and harvesting spaces from spring 2024 to winter 2025. Each grower or harvester was invited due to their work to integrate ecologically-caring practices into their foodways and to learn about their stories and the complexities of navigating more-than-human relationships in their practice. In this installation, the photos of each foodscape will form a circle around the viewer and create stacked loops of photography that tell a multiplicity of stories of the year from the 18 seasonal participants. This art installation will visually immerse participants in the seasonal transformations within lands in relationship with food growers and harvesters in Kitchener-Waterloo and Kenora, Ontario.

These photos include elements of curiosity, discovery, beauty, conflict, boundaries, and joys that shape the more-than-human world connected to each participant’s foodways, which were discussed in interviews and co-experienced by participants and Josalyn while walking, working, and exploring together.

Viewers are invited to trace multiple lines of transformation in photos through the seasons and reflect on more-than-human contributions and relationships in local foodscapes. In engaging the visual senses and bringing forward images of the living more-than-human world, this work asks the participant to reflect on and feel into the present and possible natures of foodscape relationships with other-than-human lives.

Spring Photos

Summer Photos

Fall Photos

Winter Photos

One Health Student Conference

Short presentation on seasonality in research and go-along interviews

University of Guelph

Josalyn Radcliffe | School of Public Health SciencesPublic Health Sciences PhD student Josalyn’s research explores the challenges to human well-being, like biodiversity loss and climate change.

'Thesis Thursday' at the University of Waterloo

Profile published on November 21, 2024 to highlight this research journey in progress.

Article for Ontario Nurses for the Environment (RNAO): Winter newsletter 2025

When I joined ONEIG in 2019, I was reckoning with a growing understanding of the depth of our unfolding ecological threats, and I was determined to use my education as an opportunity to specialize my practice and impact the ecological determinants of health.

I was watching my kids grow up in a society where we are disconnected, both from one another and from the living world that is our home and support system. I heard Elders urge us to connect with nature and consider our responsibilities. I heard scholars repeatedly discuss the need for a ‘change of consciousness’ and ‘social tipping points.’ I walked the streets with Rob and Fiona Hanley in Montreal at the Global Biodiversity conference which called out the catastrophe of biodiversity loss and summoned the world to find ‘harmony with nature.’

This path led me to my current PhD, focused on an explorative qualitative study anchored in two local food landscapes as spaces of potential for building relationships with our living world and well-being at multiple scales. In each of the last four seasons, I interviewed 18 people in Kitchener-Waterloo and Kenora, Ontario (my two home communities), photographing and learning about the joys, challenges, tensions, and impacts of their practices growing and harvesting food for themselves and others in ways that embed care for biodiversity. Right now, I’m almost in a phase of analysis and writing after a whirlwind of a year listening, walking, exploring, and working alongside participants.

This work is change-oriented, driven by critical theory, in both the design of the study and in the outcomes. My work, alongside the participants, is meant to provoke reflection regarding our relationships and responsibilities to the many lives we share our home with, with whom our health and well-being is inextricably linked. Biodiversity loss, food insecurity, and climate change are great threats to Public Health at all scales, so this study enables consideration of on-the-ground experiences of people engaging in work that could contribute to addressing these issues together. As a nurse, I’m gaining knowledge and skill in interviewing, analysis, project management, and health promotion. I can also feel a transformation within myself as a person, while I reflect deeply on the harms done and the beauty of possible paths forward.

One day, I look forward to sharing a lot more, but I’m so glad to have this chance to give you an introduction to what I’ve been up to! Please feel free to reach out if you would like to connect!

Research in Practice in Health Sciences Conference:

April 4, 2025

Upcoming: Canadian Association for Food Studies Lightning Talk

(Congress in Toronto, June 2025)

Abstract: Calls to transform food practices to address ecological crises and support biodiversity are being heard at all levels, from the United Nations to community knowledge-keepers, activists, food growers and harvesters. There is an urgent need to shift towards more harmonious and respectful relationships with more-than-human life within food systems. Moreover, we face an immediate and timely need for critical research that explores the everyday material practices and experiences of those navigating and experimenting with shifting relationships within their everyday food practices to inform this transformation in a material way. Within neighbourhoods, more-than-human community members enact and negotiate boundaries, hierarchies, and politics of ownership and care as they work to meet their own food needs within seasonal cycles. Within this brief talk, I will bring in a more-than-human theoretical lens and highlight some of the ways that folks in Kitchener-Waterloo and Kenora, Ontario are navigating efforts to support local ecology while growing and harvesting plants and eggs to feed themselves and their communities. This talk will be anchored in a seasonal study of 18 participants interviewed between the equinoxes and solstices from Spring 2024 to Winter 2025 (67 interviews) and will highlight the shifting challenges, joys, and tensions of sharing space with other-than-human life within the local foodscape. From jubilant discovery and deepening love and connection to uninvited guests and aesthetic tensions with human neighbours, I will introduce key themes that have shaped their experiences.

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