The Institute for Sustainable Food Conference
Join the first Institute for Sustainable Food conference 'Food is our common language' on 16th April 2021. Registration for this online event coming soon!
Food is our common language
Food is what brings us together. Through food, we form our most profound and most complex relations with other humans and with our environments. Formed well, these relations support health and flourishing; formed badly, they create dysfunctions, inequalities, and degradation.
In the UK, the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and the changes to food systems catalysed by Brexit have brought food into the spotlight in an unprecedented way. The ongoing challenges of environmental degradation, diet related morbidities, and food insecurity mean improving food systems from field to fork has never been more pressing.
This conference catalyses interdisciplinary conversations on the most urgent issues associated with food systems today under the umbrella of the Institute for Sustainable Food at the University of Sheffield.
Our community of over 100 researchers is transforming how food is grown, produced and consumed. This conference showcases their work through short thematic provocations and interactive panel debates with leading voices in the interdisciplinary space of agri-food research. Through a series of exciting cross-disciplinary sessions and additional events, the conference encourages debate and networking to spark new research ideas and generate new connections. It strengthens links between existing research and demonstrates the holistic approach to agri-food system challenges which is the hallmark of the Institute for Sustainable Food.
Welcome from the Institute for Sustainable Food
Food across research boundaries
At the Institute for Sustainable Food we are seeking new ways to understand the complexity of the food system. Our unique approach recognises that achieving a sustainable food future is both a socio-cultural and a technological problem. We place the health of our environment, food and global population at the core of our mission to make agri-food systems more sustainable. We are developing the innovations that will allow us to live within the limits imposed by the resources available to us and provide a sustainable food future for all.
Opening panel
Food is our common language. Food lies at the foundation of our relationships with the environment, and with one another. In the academia, the complex and interconnected challenges related to food call for a collaboration between disciplines, research areas, and communities. Our shared objective at the Institute for Sustainable Food is to contribute to a future in which healthy food to supports healthy people and healthy environments.
In this opening panel, we introduce the unique vision for of the Institute for Sustainable Food, and invite our keynote speakers to reflect on the importance of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research to the future of food.
Institute for Sustainable Food speakers
Professor Peter Jackson
Professor of GeographyDepartment of Geography
Professor Peter Jackson is the Co-Director of the University of Sheffield Institute for Sustainable Food. His research focuses on social and cultural geography and consumption and identity.
P.A.Jackson@Sheffield.ac.uk+44 114 222 7908
Keynote speakers
Henry Dimbleby
Henry Dimbleby was given the role of lead non-executive board member of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs in March 2018. In June 2019 the Environment Secretary appointed Henry Dimbleby to lead the National Food
Strategy. Henry Dimbleby co-founded the Leon restaurant chain. He was a co-founder of the Sustainable Restaurant Association and co-authored The School Food Plan (2013), which set out actions to transform what children eat in schools and how they learn about food.
Flora Hetherington
Flora is a senior manager in UKRI’s Global Food Security Programme, a UK cross-government programme on food security research. She currently manages the Transforming UK Food Systems SPF Programme, which aims to fundamentally transform the UK food system by placing healthy people and a healthy natural environment at its centre. Addressing questions around what we should eat, produce and manufacture and what we should import, taking into account the complex interactions between health, environment and socioeconomic factors. Previous to this role Flora was an N8 AgriFood Knowledge Exchange Fellow at Durham University and she has a research background in plant developmental biology, focussing on how plants respond to nutrient deficiency in the soil.
Panel Session 1
Justice!
Healthy People in Healthy Environments
Our societies and environments are in a food crisis. In responding to urgent issues such as malnutrition, ecological degradation, or food poverty we may all too easily lose sight of the big picture. The various demands of a sustainable and healthy food system must be balanced to ensure research does not simply reinforce existing inequalities. Reflecting on the challenge of creating such research, in this session our speakers and panellists engage with the following provocation:
How can we embed justice in agri-food research?
Keynote speaker
TBC
Institute for Sustainable Food speakers
Elliott Woodhouse
Department of Philosophy
Panel Session 2
Change!
Continuity and Discontinuity in the Pursuit of Sustainable Food
Change comes in many forms: the complex timeline of policy change, the insidious creep of climatic disturbance, or the sudden shock of a pandemic. As food systems and their contexts change, what can we learn from history in shaping better food futures, and what accepted wisdoms need debunking? What adaptations are required to ensure food sustainability and security? In this session our speakers and panellists engage with the following provocation:
What can we learn from change events to facilitate positive transformation?
Keynote speaker
Professor Tim Lang
Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University London's Centre for Food Policy since 2002. He founded the Centre in 1994. After a PhD in social psychology at Leeds University, he became a hill farmer in the 1970s in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire which shifted his attention to food policy, where it has been ever since. For years, he's engaged in academic and public research and debate about its direction, locally to globally. His abiding interest is how policy addresses the mixed challenge of being food for the environment, health, social justice, and citizens.
Institute for Sustainable Food speakers
Panel Session 3
Future!
Emerging Food Landscapes
Session outline: what is the future of and tensions associated with the use of technology in the future of farming under a changing climate? What are the emerging tensions around different innovations? How may the changing technologies and practices impact on the future of farming landscapes and livelihoods? In this session our speakers and panellists engage with the following provocation:
What is the future of agricultural landscapes?
Keynote speaker
Sue Pritchard
Sue is the Chief Executive of Food, Farming and Countryside Commission, and is focused on leading the organisation in its mission to bring people together to find radical and practical ways to transform our food system and improve our climate, nature, health and economy. Sue brings extensive experience working with leaders in businesses, governments and enterprises, blending the academic and the practical for sustainable systems change.
