Ian Mosby

Dr. Ian Mosby is a historian of food, Indigenous health, and the politics of settler colonialism. His current research focuses on the history of human biomedical experimentation on Indigenous peoples in Canada during the second half of the 20th century as well as the history of settler colonialism on the Canadian Prairies. He has published widely on topics ranging from the history of monosodium glutamate (MSG) and anti-Chinese racism, to the long-term health impacts of hunger and malnutrition in residential schools. 

Selected Scholarly Publications

Books

Subjected to Colonial Science: Mass Clinical Trials, Prairie Tropical Medicine, and Medical Experimentation on Treaty 6 First Nations, 1964­-1973. University of Manitoba Press, Forthcoming.

(With Sarah Rotz and Evan Fraser), Uncertain Harvest: The Future of Food on a Warming Planet. Regina: University of Regina Press, 2020. (Honourable Mention for the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada 2020 Book Award.)

Food Will Win the War: The Politics, Culture, and Science of Food on Canada’s Home Front. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014. (Awarded the Canadian Historical Association 2015 Political History Book Prize, and shortlisted for the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences 2016 Canada Prize in the Humanities.)

Articles

(With Elizabeth Mackenzie), “Reconciling the Ledger: The Rupert’s Land Purchase, Settler Capitalism, and Indigenous Dispossession on the Prairies,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 34, no. 1 (2025): 105-139. (Awarded the 2025 Canadian Historical Association Indigenous History Article Prize.)

(With Jaris Swidrovich), “Medical Experimentation and the Roots of COVID-19 Vaccine Hesitancy Among Indigenous Peoples in Canada,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 193, no. 11 (March 2021): E381-E383.

(With Catherine Carstairs), “Colonial Extractions: Oral Health Care and Indigenous People in Canada, 1945-1979,” Canadian Historical Review 101, no. 2 (June 2020): 192-216. (Awarded the 2020 Canadian Historical Review Best Article Prize.)

(With Tracey Galloway), “‘Hunger was Never Absent’: How Residential School Diets Shaped Current Patterns of Diabetes among Indigenous Peoples in Canada,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 189, no. 32 (14 August 2017): E1043-E1045.

“Administering Colonial Science: Nutrition Research and Human Biomedical Experimentation in Aboriginal Communities and Residential Schools, 1942-1952,” Histoire sociale/Social History 46, no. 91 (May 2013): 615-642.

“‘That Won Ton Soup Headache’: The Chinese Restaurant Syndrome, MSG and the Making of American Food, 1968-1980,” Social History of Medicine 22, no. 1 (April 2009): 133-151. (Awarded the 2010 Nicholas C. Mullins Prize by the Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S).)

Book Chapters

(With Elizabeth McKenzie and Emily B. Kaliel), “School Food Programs in Canada: A Preliminary History,” in Rachel Engler-Stringer and Amberley T. Ruetz, eds., School Food Programs in Canada: Models for Success (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2026), 14-49.

“Eat Your Primary Sources! Researching and Teaching the Taste of History,” in Jocelyn Thorpe, Stephanie Rutherford, and L. Anders Sandberg, eds., Methodological Challenges in Nature-Culture and Environmental History Research (New York: Routledge, 2016), 164-170.

“Making and Breaking Canada’s Food Rules: Science, the State, and the Government of Nutrition, 1942-1949,” in F. Iacovetta, M. Epp, and V. Korinek, eds., Edible Histories, Cultural Politics: Towards a Canadian Food History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012), 409-432.