Category Archives: Research

These posts and pages are drawn from research presentations and publications that I have produced.

Mapping residuals can help identify communities that are resilient: Feeding Affordance and Decent Helpings

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IMD as a predictor of children’s overweight status in Doncaster communities where there were more than 75 children measured.

Data for this analysis was provided in anonymised form from Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council Public Health, who was the collaborator on this research application.

The aim of this research is twofold. Firstly to consider the predictors of rates of children who are overweight and obese at community level and to determine if there are contextual factors that contribute to these rates.  Secondly, the research aimed to identify communities that were performing better than would be expected so that a qualitative case study could be undertaken to try to see what might be supporting their resilience.

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Neoliberalism and the making of food as waste–or–The need to reframe the debate from food waste to food surplus

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I seem to do a lot of talks and in doing so sometimes this involves reshaping and thinking further about talks I have given in the past.  On Monday I presented at the Annual Symposium held by the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures at the University of Sheffield.  There were many papers that I felt sat well next to each other.  I particularly could see the synergies between my presentation and that of John Miller, who is in the English Department, who talked about natural capital and the humanities. Value was a central part of his discussion and I thought it well with my text.   This text is a revised version of what I presented earlier this year at West Town Farm as part of the IBG meetings.  
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Food Matters and Neoliberalism: Talk Transcript for Food Matters Symposium

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I recently participated in symposium that was considering waste in relation to food.  It was put on as a pre-conference event to the 2015 RGS/IBG meetings held in Exeter. The symposium, which took place on a working farm, was both fascinating and very engaging. You can find out more about the event and its participants on the web site developed by the organisers here.  I encourage you to have a look at the link as you will learn about West Town Farm and the activities of the day. My role at the symposium was to give a short talk around the issue of food waste and neoliberalism.  I chose to use an excellent food re-use project–The Real Junk Food Project–as a mechanism for focusing my questions. I am offering the text of my provocation in what follows.   Continue reading →

The 2015 general election and its implications for food insecurity in the UK.

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On Friday, 8 May 2015 I awoke to discover that not only were we not looking forward to a new coalition government in the UK, but that the overall collapse of the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party has given the Conservative government a mandate in UK politics. While I, at an individual level, am likely to see some benefits from the strong neoliberalism that underpins this government’s ideology, I am concerned by the implications of this for the country more generally and particularly the nation’s poor. Indeed, I see a further deepening of the division between those who have and those who have not. As I will elaborate, this will mean the continued exponential growth in the numbers of people requiring emergency food assistance and increased numbers of children and elderly with inadequate food supply, which will also translate into higher rates of obesity, diet rated illness and malnutrition. These trends as they are situated within the current climate of neoliberal austerity will also mean that we, if we are to continue as a nation with social values (as opposed to only economic values) must find ways of filling the gap, not just for families but also for our communities. Continue reading →