Dear all

(Apologies for cross-posting)

STUDENTSHIP OPPORTUNITY: ‘Young Children’s Relations with Food’

Please see below and advert for a fantastic PhD studentship opportunity at the Education and Social Research Institute at Manchester Metropolitan University. ESRI is one of the leading UK centres for applied educational research and evaluation, and a thriving research community.

http://www2.mmu.ac.uk/research/studentships/education-/ 

(Click on drop down link for specific studentship for more information)

Please pass on to your networks and masters-level students in education and relevant social science disciplines who you think would be interested in this.

The closing date for applications is the 8th August.  Enquiries can be made to Professor Liz Jones, tel. +44(0)161 247 2056, email [log in to unmask] 

Kind regards
Kim Allen

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PROJECT SUMMARY

The recent ‘2 year old nursery offer’ for disadvantaged children means that more will be encountering food in nurseries at an age where their dietary inclinations are still developing, where family/ cultural practices around food are still being internalised. The study will focus on how children, practitioners and parents negotiate these encounters and what implications these have for pedagogy. 

PROJECT AIMS AND OBJECTIVES
The aim of the project is to develop understandings of young children’s relationships with food both in institutional settings as well as in the home.
By focusing on how young children, practitioners and parents negotiate meal times, snacks and other occasions (parties etc) when food is an element, the study will contribute to the development of innovative pedagogical practices that are sensitive to children’s embodied engagements with food as well as extending knowledge in relation to food and eating that goes beyond notions of ‘healthy eating’ and or a ‘balanced diet’.   

As of September 2014, current government has introduced the ‘two year offer’ a policy that targets economically vulnerable families including: parents receiving Working Tax Credits and who earn no more than £16,190 a year; those who have a current statement of special educational needs (SEN) or an education, health and care plan; those that get Disability Living Allowance; those children who are ‘looked after’.  Early Years Practitioners, whose role it is to work closely with children and their families are clearly implicated in a programme where an aim is to mollify/rectify being ‘disadvantaged’. Such a responsibility will inevitably add a layer of complexity around meal and snack times where adult discourses of care and education and children’s own embodied relations with food will have to be negotiated. Such negotiations are further tinged by the gathering momentum around the use of food banks in the North West that drastically highlights the stark relationship between poverty, malnourishment and hunger. They are also tinged by recent debates, policy initiatives and research in relation to children and food including:  OECD research around families eating together and levels of truancy and tackling obesity through the Health Child Programme: a framework for action (NHS, 2013).

It is within and against this milieu that the study will ask:
•	How do practitioners working with the youngest children negotiate the relationship between food, parents and the setting?
•	How can young children be supported in developing a nourishing and comfortable relation to eating in institutional settings?
•	What spaces are available for practitioners to ‘play’ with children in the context of food and feeding?
•	What is the impact of communal/ social eating?
•	How does this impact relate to class, gender, race and ethnicity?
•	Where and how do the youngest children perform agency?
•	Where and how do practitioners perform agency?
•	Where and how do parents perform agency?


SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS OF THE PROJECT: Interested applicants should have a recent first or upper second in a relevant undergraduate degree and ideally a recent Masters, preferably one that has included research training. Relevant subject areas include Education and relevant Social Sciences. Experience in undertaking research with an ethnographic orientation and case studies would be an asset. Qualifications and experience in teaching also helpful but not essential.