Food systems past, present and future
Our food systems past, present and future research explores the long-term effects of food systems, addressing how they have shaped the spaces, places, and landscapes of today.
The turn towards whole systems thinking in sustainability research has invited renewed discussions on how long-term perspectives on change, when unified with multidisciplinary collaboration, can offer holistic solutions for addressing significant societal challenges.
Food Systems: Past, Present, and Future brings together researchers from across the University of Sheffield and a network of external partners to explore the long-term effects of food systems, addressing how they have shaped the spaces, places, and landscapes of today.
From a broad range of research backgrounds, the theme fosters the cross-pollination of methods, findings, and emerging questions in cognate disciplines on food and drink-related research to help think about how knowledge of the past might inform our understandings of the present (and vice versa). While emphasising the legacy and impact of “historical” contexts, this is defined and applied in a variety of conceptualisations, from deep-time visions of food system change over millennia, to condensed thematic “microhistories”, to recent targeted case studies.
Equally, by including ideas, impressions, and real-world concerns expressed by modern practitioners involved in the food and drink industries, the theme’s work utilises bodies of historical information for practical solutions and interventions. As well as supporting and showcasing key projects across the University engaging with such questions, the theme is also developing new interdisciplinary research projects, initiatives, and events to further this strand of inquiry. Accordingly, the interlinks and ramifications of food production and consumption is explored through different social, historical, and cultural settings, investigating how historical events resonate and echo in contemporary society.
Key projects
England’s Psychoactive Revolution, c. 1550 to c. 1750: Phil Withington’s Major Leverhulme Fellowship is producing the first integrated study of England’s role in the global proliferation of intoxicating and addictive substances produced and consumed between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.
Place, Craft, and Alcohol in Historical Perspective: Nick Groat and Phil Withington’s Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project investigating the many ways that alcohol has shaped - and continues to influence - the post-industrial landscape of Sheffield.
The School Meals Service Past, Present – and Future? Heather Ellis’ Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-funded project with colleagues from UCL and Wolverhampton seeking to discover the impact of the School Meals Service upon schools, communities and families from 1906 until the present day. Through a combination of historical and ethnographic approaches, the project addresses what lessons may be learned from the lived experiences of school meal recipients, teachers, parents and catering staff, both now and in the past.
Politics of the English Grain Trade, 1315-1815: This project explores the politics of the English grain supply from 1315-1815 against the background of fluctuations in the balance of population and food supply, from famine susceptibility through a period of self-sufficiency to the beginnings of structural dependence on imports. This five-year Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) funded project was based at the University of Sheffield for three years, and has since moved to the University of Oxford. The project is also partnered with the University of Utrecht. The distinctive contribution of the project lies in integrating the following three strands of empirical work in a broad and multifaceted context: Miling, Regulation and Attitudes to Millers; Cultural History of the Meaning Attached to Bread and Grain; History of the Baltic and North Sea Grain Trade.
Companions. A History of Britain in 20 Animals: Umberto Albarella’s Major Leverhulme Fellowship supports the writing of a book that will be published by Bloomsbury entitled “Companions. A History of Britain in 20 Animals”. This is a book about the contribution of animals to British History from the end of the last Glaciation to the Modern days. Food is a prominent topic covered by the book.
Forgotten Food: Culinary Memory, Local Heritage and Lost Agricultural Varieties in India: This project aims to use history and literature in innovative ways to address challenges linked to local communities and food sustainability in India. The project, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF)-Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) (2019-23) and Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) (2022-25), brings food historians, literary scholars, sociologists and plant scientists into dialogue with public practitioners engaged in India’s food and local heritage sector – including local historians, heritage practitioners, authors, chefs, farmers, performers, filmmakers and street vendors. Together, Forgotten Food’s activities have invigorated local heritage agendas to bring economic and cultural benefits to struggling communities and regions in India, while also fostering social cohesion and the mediating of differences between religious groups.
A Bountiful Spread: Eating and Etiquette in Muslim South Asia: Ths is the topic of Siobhan Lambert-Hurley’s Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship (2024-27). It starts from the premise that what and how Muslims eat is of vital importance in India now. At a time when Hindu nationalism projects fixities around food and identity, this project offers the first, sustained study of evolving culinary practices among Muslims in modern South Asia. Its aims have contemporary and historiographical significance: underlining the importance of neglected Muslim histories and Urdu-language sources, to how eating and etiquette have been negotiated ‘on the ground’.
How Societies Deal with Human Excreta: In collaboration with Prof. Dr. Esther Turnhout (University of Twente) and Dr. Eva Giraud, Marieke Meesters’ work critically examines the role of human bodies, in particular human excreta, in agricultural and natural life cycles.
Investigating Cultural Connections through the Archaeobotanical Record: Bell Beaker Plant Economy. A Comparative Analysis of Late Neolithic - Early Bronze Age Agriculture in Europe, 3000-1800 BC: Catherine Longford’s British Academy Fellowship investigating what the ‘Bell Beaker’ phenomenon represents social and culturally and how it spread by analysing crop choices and cultivation strategies at Bell Beaker and contemporary sites (3000-1800BC) and Bell Beaker cereal remains. The broad comparative study of Bell Beaker plant economy and agriculture aims to provide insight into cultural connections and identity across the Bell Beaker horizon.
