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 will bring 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.
Bringing together researchers from a broad range of disciplinary backgrounds, the theme will help foster 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 will be 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 will aim to utilise bodies of historical information for practical solutions and interventions. Accordingly, the interlinks and ramifications of food production and consumption will be explored through different social, historical, and cultural settings, and investigating how historical events resonate and echo in contemporary society.
Key projects
The 'Politics of the English Grain Trade, 1315-1815' 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.
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.
