48th Annual Convention

Janine Wedel is an award-winning author who writes about governance, corruption, influence elites, and accountability through the lens of an anthropologist. She is a professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, as well as a Global Policy Chair at the University of Bath, UK, and Fellow at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. She is the author of several prize-winning books, including Unaccountable: How the Establishment Corrupted Our Finances, Freedom, and Politics and Created an Outsider Class; Shadow Elite: How the World’s New Power Brokers Undermine Democracy, Government, and the Free Market; and Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe. She also published Political Rigging: A Primer on Political Capture and Influence in the 21st Century (2017, with Nazia Hussain and Dana A. Dolan); Confronting Corruption, Building Accountability (2010, with Lloyd J. Dumas); The Unplanned Society (1992); and The Private Poland (1986).

A public intellectual, Wedel has frequently contributed analysis pieces to major news outlets, and her work has been reviewed or translated into more than a dozen languages. A five-time Fulbright fellow, she has also won the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, as well as major awards from the National Science Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, New America Foundation, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and Institute for New Economic Thinking, among others. Wedel is co-founder and past president of the Association for the Anthropology of Policy (ASAP), a section of the American Anthropological Association.

Cory Ollikka is a 4th generation farmer from Waskatenau, Alberta. He operates an organic grain and beef cattle farm as well as holding an off-farm job in Municipal Government. Cory has held numerous positions at the District, Regional and National levels of the NFU since 1986 and was the NFU’s 7th National President from 1998-2001. He has helped chair several NFU conventions.

Anna Korzenszky is from Hungary. She is exploring mechanisms for farm succession outside of the family as a possible contribution to the generational renewal of small scale farming and agrarian culture. In addition to her sociology studies at the University of Vienna, she has been active with the Nyeleni Europe Movement for Food Sovereignty and is a member of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization team in Rome that facilitates relationships between the FAO and civil society organizations.

Dr. A Haroon Akram-Lodhi is an economist who focuses on the political economy of agrarian change in developing countries, the economic dimensions of gender relations, and the political ecology of sustainable rural livelihoods and communities in contemporary poor countries. He teaches at Trent University on global human inequality, the future of smallholder peasant communities in the world food system, the sustainability of rural social structures, relations, institutions and communities, and gender and economic policy. He edits two academic journals and has been appointed to prestigious roles in his field at universities in Canada, the USA, Mexico and at the United Nations. His most recent book is Hungry for Change: Farmers, Food Justice and the Agrarian Question. It explains how the creation, structure and operation of the world food system is marginalizing family farmers, small-scale peasant farmers and landless workers as it entrenches us all in a global subsistence crisis and how building upon the concerns of food sovereignty can solve the current crisis.

Chris Holman and his partner Maria Davis own and operate Nami Moon Farms outside of Stevens Point, WI. The 41-acre farm focuses on pasture-raised poultry and hogs, perennial and annual fruits and vegetables, chicken and duck eggs, and small grains for feed components. Chris and Maria are lifetime members of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, and Chris currently serves on the state board. He also serves on the National Farmers Union (US) board as the representative for next generation issues. As a veteran, Chris has worked closely with the Farmer Veteran Coalition and he also served on USDA’s Advisory Committee on Beginning Farmers and Ranchers. Maria works full-time off of the farm for WorldBuilders, a non-profit that raises millions of dollars each year for Heifer International. Chris has a M.A. in Geography from the University of Oregon. He taught Arabic and Middle Eastern Geography for 15 years before quitting his academic career to farm full-time.