Dr Gregory Cooper
Department of Geography
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Full contact details
Department of Geography
Geography and Planning Building
Winter Street
Sheffield
S3 7ND
- Profile
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Greg’s research cuts across the major themes of developing agri-food systems, environmental sustainability and social-ecological resilience. He joined the Department of Geography and Institute for Sustainable Food as a postdoctoral research fellow on the UKRI funded Action Against Stunting Hub in March 2021. Prior to joining the University of Sheffield, Greg spent three years at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) as the Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the Market Intervention for Nutritional Improvement (MINI) project (funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office). Greg completed his PhD in Geography at the University of Southampton, where he used system dynamics modelling to explore the social-ecological sustainability of the Chilika lagoon fishery system in Odisha, India. Greg also holds a BSc in physical geography from the University of Southampton.
- Research interests
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Greg’s main research interests include the trade-offs and challenges involved in creating nutritious and equitable food systems in low- and middle-income countries; the causes, consequences and options to tackle food losses and wastage; environmental sustainability and the creation of regional ‘safe and just operating spaces’ for Earth’s natural resource systems; the resilience of social-ecological systems in the face of short-term stresses (i.e. disease outbreaks and pollution events) and long-term trends (i.e. population and climate changes), and the causes of the tipping points and regime shifts as social-ecological systems do eventually collapse.
Since his PhD, Greg has specialised in the development of quantitative and qualitative system dynamics modelling tools to tackle questions of equitable food access, social-ecological sustainability and resilience. During the Market Intervention for Nutritional Improvement (MINI) project, Greg led the development of a system dynamics model to identify food system policy levers to increase the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables in small, relatively rural retail markets in the Indian state of Bihar. Over the past couple of years, he has also contributed to the refinement of participatory group model building approaches, which aim to benefit the formal modelling process by bringing together stakeholders with lived experience of the system for the co-creation of knowledge. As such, Greg has spent over one year conducting fieldwork in the Indian states of Odisha and Bihar, where he most recently conducted a series of group model building workshops, value chain assessments and farmer household surveys.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- Development beyond 2030: more collaboration, less competition?. International Development Planning Review, 46(2), 227-242. View this article in WRRO
- Investigating market-based opportunities for the provision of nutritious and safe diets to prevent childhood stunting: a UKRI-GCRF action against stunting hub protocol paper. BMJ Paediatrics Open, 8(Suppl 1), e001671-e001671.
- UN-Nutrition Journal. Volume 1: Transforming nutrition.
- Food security indicators in deltaic and coastal research: a scoping review. CABI Reviews, 2022.
- Quantifying Earth system interactions for sustainable food production via expert elicitation. Nature Sustainability.
- Can fruit and vegetable aggregation systems better balance improved producer livelihoods with more equitable distribution?. World Development, 148. View this article in WRRO
- Hydropower Impacts on Livelihood Capital: Evidence from the Resettlement of the Upper Paunglaung Hydropower Project, Myanmar. Asian International Studies Review, 22(2), 189-216.
- Using qualitative system dynamics analysis to promote inclusive livestock value chains: a case study of the South African broiler value chain. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 5. View this article in WRRO
- Enriching value chains through maps : reflections from spatial group model building in Myanmar and India. Development in Practice. View this article in WRRO
- Identifying ‘win-win-win’ futures from inequitable value chain trade-offs: A system dynamics approach. Agricultural Systems, 190. View this article in WRRO
- Regime shifts occur disproportionately faster in larger ecosystems. Nature Communications, 11(1). View this article in WRRO
- Modelling future safe and just operating spaces in regional social-ecological systems. Science of The Total Environment, 651(Part 2), 2105-2117. View this article in WRRO
- Ecological health assessment of a coastal ecosystem: Case study of the largest brackish water lagoon of Asia. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 138, 352-363. View this article in WRRO
- Sources and Variability of Petroleum Hydrocarbon Residues in Sediments of Chilika Lagoon, East Coast of India. Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, 99(1), 100-107. View this article in WRRO
- Identifying value chain trade-offs from fruit and vegetable aggregation services in Bangladesh using a system dynamics approach. PLOS ONE, 19(1), e0297509-e0297509.
- Earlier collapse of Anthropocene ecosystems driven by multiple faster and noisier drivers. Nature Sustainability.
- The challenges of aligning aggregation schemes with equitable fruit and vegetable delivery: lessons from Bihar, India. Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print).
Conference proceedings papers
- Advances in methods and metrics in measuring food environments and implications for healthy food choices. ANNALS OF NUTRITION AND METABOLISM, Vol. 79 (pp 191-191)
Preprints
- Multiple drivers and extreme events collapse social-ecological systems sooner, Research Square Platform LLC.
- Development beyond 2030: more collaboration, less competition?. International Development Planning Review, 46(2), 227-242. View this article in WRRO
- Teaching interests
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Greg is interested in teaching around the themes of environmental sustainability, resilience and international development. At present, he supervises two Masters students on the GEO6805/6810 dissertation course, and will be contributing to the running of seminars on the GEO6801 ‘Ideas and Practice in International Development’ in the near future.
- Teaching activities
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GEO6805 (2020/21); GEO6810 (2020/21); GEO6801 (2021/2022)