Graham Riches

Professor Emeritus

School of Social Work

Faculty of Arts

COVID-19 Research Area(s)

Research Specializations

Graham Riches, is professor emeritus and former director of the School of Social Work, University of British Columbia. From food and social policy perspectives his research focuses primarily on the politics of domestic hunger, corporate food charity and the right to food in Canada and the Global North. The introduction of US style food banking to Canada in the early 1980s prompted him to ask why in the rich food secure world we are feeding wasted food to hungry people. He was a consultant on the Right to Food to the UN FAO (2004). His publications include Food Banks and the Welfare Crisis (CCSD,1986); First World Hunger Revisited. (co-ed Palgrave, 2014) and Food Bank Nations. Poverty, Corporate Charity and the Right to Food (Routledge, 2018).  This most recent work has implications for addressing food insecurity during Covid-19 and in the post pandemic world.