Barron, Jennie

Jennie has always had a passionate intellectual interest in social justice, community, and connection. These themes are a constant thread throughout Jennie's academic explorations, activism, and in all the courses she teaches. Jennie’s masters' research explored social movement politics at the intersection of Indigenous rights and environmentalism in the territory of the Labrador Innu, specifically around the issues of large-scale nickel mining and low-level military flight testing by NATO.

Her PhD focused on food security and urban space—specifically, community orchards. Her interest is in how people are re-imagining and reviving the concept of “the commons”—these being inclusive, non-commodified urban spaces where people are self-governing around the provision of food as a fundamental human right.

Activism has been very formative in Jennie’s development as an academic and a teacher, ever since the early 1990s when she cut her activist teeth in the anti-apartheid struggle and resistance to the first Gulf War in Iraq. In the early 2000s, she was very involved in a campaign to end the sanctions against Iraq that were killing thousands of children. Closer to home, she has worked hard to educate the public about the unnecessary use of toxic pesticides, and to bring in a bylaw restricting their use in Nelson. Her other local passion has to do with developing food gardens and green spaces at schools, and volunteering as a director on the board of the Nelson Food Cupboard.