Jonathan Crush is University Research Professor and a faculty member in the Department of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University and Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa. He obtained his first degree at Cambridge University, M.A. at Wilfrid Laurier University and Ph.D. at Queen’s University. He has taught at the National University of Lesotho and the University of Alberta and was a member of the Queen’s faculty from 1987 to 2012. In 2008, he was awarded a Queen’s Research Chair, and in 2012 he joined the Balsillie School as CIGI Chair in Global Migration and Development.

He founded and directs the Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP) (a consortium of Canadian and African researchers) and co-founded the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN), a research, policy and capacity-building network of Canadian and African universities, NGOs and municipal governance networks.  After joining the Balsillie School, he established the Hungry Cities Partnership which links colleagues from Laurier and Waterloo with partners in Mexico, Jamaica, South Africa, Mozambique, Namibia, Kenya, India and China.

In 2017, Jonathan led a successful Laurier application to the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Advanced Scholars (QES-AS) program for doctoral, post-doctoral and post-doctoral scholar exchanges between Canada and several countries in the South, focused on building capacity in urban food system governance.

In 2020, he was awarded a SSHRC Partnership Grant to establish the Migration and Food Security (MiFOOD) Network which partners the BSIA and WLU with scholars at five Canadian universities, and university partners in China, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Kenya, Mozambique, Namibia, Qatar, Singapore, and South Africa, as well as the IOM, ILO, FAO, MIDEQ and the SDSN.