Shayan Lallani,
PhD

Shayan contributes to destination development and research projects at the Culinary Tourism Alliance. He works with destinations to develop strategic plans and tourism products and programs such as food trails, ambassador programs, and accreditation programs. He also leads many of the Culinary Tourism Alliance's academic engagements, such as liaison with academic partners and sharing research results through conferences and publishing.

Shayan is a cultural historian, traveller, and lifelong foodie. Born in Florida to a Pakistani family, his parents encouraged him to eat as a way of understanding his own culture and to interact with the diverse foodways around him in multicultural cities such as Miami, Orlando, and eventually Toronto.

His professional interest in food is rooted in 2011, when he joined his family on their first Caribbean cruise. Upon boarding the ship, he instantly noticed the abundance of dining opportunities. He became particularly fascinated with the numerous culturally and geographically themed eateries. During subsequent cruises over the following years, Shayan increasingly wondered why cruise lines represent other cultures through food, and how the practice changed over time. As he finished his Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Toronto, these questions prompted him to pursue his Master of Arts in Food History – a very different trajectory from his original intention of attending law school after undergraduate studies. His thesis on the evolution of cruise ship dining only led to more questions.

It was at this point that Shayan knew his academic passion for food and tourism studies would be a lifelong endeavor. He pursued his PhD at University of Ottawa, studying how the US-Caribbean mass-market cruise industry used dining experiences to secure a middle-class American clientele increasingly partaking in global travel during the late twentieth century. Shayan was especially interested in understanding how cruise lines used culinary experiences as a representational tool to mediate encounters between passengers and global cultures both onboard ships and at Caribbean ports.

Shayan’s work on the cruise industry has taken him across the Caribbean and Latin America, and to Alaska, California, and North Carolina. His research has been awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellowship and has appeared in leading scholarly journals such as Food, Culture & Society and Journal of Tourism History. His book project on the mass-marketization of Caribbean cruise vacations is currently under contract with the University of Illinois Press.

In his spare time, Shayan enjoys wildlife photography, muay Thai, reading, baking, and travelling. Most of all, he looks forward to many more cruises with his family.