Sophia Murphy from the University of British Columbia joins the FRC for our Food Bites series and explores the current issues in the food system and what civil society organisations and academics could be doing to work towards solutions that address the issues within the food system.

Sophia Murphy is a PhD student in the Resource Management and Environmental Studies programme at the University of British Columbia. Her research explores the role of international trade in building resilient food security. She has worked for 20 years as a policy analyst in international development, focused on economics and social justice. She has lived and worked in half a dozen countries, exploring local, national, and multilateral policy, for the most part with civil society organizations.

She is a member of the UN Committee on World Food Security’s High Level Panel of Experts and a board member with ActionAid USA. She has given public lectures, taught university courses, and published widely in a range of formats, from book chapters and academic journals to policy briefs and opinion pieces. Her undergraduate degree is from Oxford, in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. Her MSc is from the London School of Economics, in Social Policy and Planning in Developing Countries. She holds a Vanier scholarship and a scholarship from the Trudeau Foundation.