Dr. Ning Dai is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Wilfrid Laurier University and the School of International Policy and Governance. His current research focuses on the CIHR-funded project “Accessing and Mitigating the Food Security Consequences of COVID-19 in China” and the MiFOOD Project in understanding the relations between COVID-19, migration, and food security in the Kitchener-Waterloo Region. In his efforts to promote knowledge mobilization and exchange in food studies, Dr. Dai serves on the Board of Directors at Canadian Association for Food Studies (CAFS).

Dr. Dai holds a PhD in Geography and Environmental Management from the University of Waterloo. His PhD research investigates the role of food policies in modernizing China’s food systems. His dissertation titled “The State as a High Modernist Planner: Planning of Food System Transitions in Nanjing, China” critically analyzes the regional food system planning by uncovering the rationale behind and the impact of the state’s implementation of ‘high modernist aesthetics” in food systems.

Dr. Dai has long-standing research interests in food security, agricultural sustainability, and the modernization of food systems, particularly the digitization of the food retail sector. He currently studies the recent rise of e-grocery, the mutually reinforcing processes of financialization and digitization in food retailing, and the food security implications of the “e-grocery bubble”.