Sarah Elton

Sarah Elton is an Assistant Professor and inaugural Eakin Chair in Critical Qualitative Health Research Methodology in the Social and Behavioural Health Sciences Division at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto.

Dr. Elton researches the human-ecosystems-health nexus in the city. She employs critical qualitative research methods in her work on gardens, produce chains, and the human gut microbiome, often drawing on  posthumanist theory in her analysis. This latter work contributes to the emerging area of human-plant relations, the study of plants in the context of society, politics, and the production of health. Her research has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals including Social Science and Medicine, Critical Public Health, Food, Culture & Society, Gastronomica, Environmental Humanities and the Canadian Journal of Public Health. In 2021, she won an inaugural Gairdner Foundation Early Career Investigator Award and in 2020, her PhD thesis won the Joan Eakin Doctoral Award for Methodological Excellence from CQ.

From 2019-2024, Dr. Elton was an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University where she founded the Food Health Ecosystems Lab. She previously worked as a journalist, reporting on food and the environment, and wrote several books including two national bestsellers, titled Locavore and Consumed: Food for a Finite Planet.