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White Rose DTC Human Geography Pathway
Inaugural Food Studies Seminar Event
Geographies of food and the 'follow the thing' approach
Dr Ian Cook
University of Exeter
Professor Peter Jackson
University of Sheffield
Dr Megan Blake
University of Sheffield
Thursday 26th February 2015 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm
Ron Johnston Research Room
Department of Geography, University of Sheffield
Winter Street, Sheffield, S10 2TN
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This event is free of charge but if you wish to attend please notify Jonas House ([log in to unmask])
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In
2015 we are establishing a series of events related to social
scientific approaches to food studies. The events will be based within
the Human Geography pathway of the White Rose DTC but are open to anyone
who is interested in food studies and social science. Future speakers
will be from other disciplines including sociology, anthropology and
others.
For the inaugural event, Dr Ian Cook, Associate
Professor of Geography at the University of Exeter, will be discussing
his work using the 'follow the thing' approach to food studies and to
the analysis of other commodities.
The session
will also feature a panel discussion facilitated by Dr Angela Meah,
between Dr Cook, Professor Peter Jackson, and Dr Megan Blake. They will
discuss the 'state of the art' in food studies research and their
experience with a collaborative approach to authorship. Dr Cook and
Professor Jackson were among eleven co-authors on the recent chapter
'Food’s cultural geographies: texture, creativity & publics' (in
Johnson et al. 2013, The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Cultural Geography - see https://foodculturalgeographies.wordpress.com for
more details). The chapter outlined key issues in food studies research
and was authored collaboratively. Dr Blake contributed to Dr Cook's
article 'Geographies of food: afters', which also used an innovative
collaborative approach to reviewing key topics in geographical food
research. Dr Meah, the panel's facilitator, has research interests in
domestic food practices and has had the experience of working
collaboratively with Professor Peter Jackson amongst others.
Ian Cook's previous works include the three significant 'Geographies of food' review papers in Progress in Human Geography,
and although his recent research has focused on the commodity-centred
research process rather than food specifically he is well placed to
offer an insight into how the area of food studies has developed. Dr
Cook is also a longtime advocate of innovative collaborative research:
in addition to his experience of creating work in an iterative process
with large numbers of co-authors, he acknowledges his intellectual debt
to others in his own writing by signing his name as 'Ian Cook et al.'
Peter Jackson
is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Sheffield.
Recent projects include an interdisciplinary study of 'Changing
Families, Changing Food' (funded by the Leverhulme Trust) and a study of
consumer anxieties about food (funded by the European Research
Council). New work focuses on 'convenience' food with colleagues in
Denmark, Germany and Sweden (funded by the ERA-Net sustainable food
initiative). Recent publications include Food Words (2013) and the
Handbook of Food Research (2013). His new book, Anxious Appetites: food
and consumer culture, will be published later this year. Besides his
academic work, Peter currently chairs the Food Standards Agency's Social
Science Research Committee.
Megan Blake is the Director of the Food Security and Food Justice
MA in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield. Her
research interests focus on the ways that social institutions, practices
and place differentially shape access to resources, with her recent
research focusing on food availability and food justice. She has
undertaken this work across a number of international contexts including
the UK, Hong Kong and Hungary. Methodologically, this research adopts
collaborative and interdisciplinary approaches. As such, a second strand
of her research considers the ways in which the public can be engaged
within research that seeks to address issues of food justice, including
ways in which partnerships between the public and the university can
inform research questions, outputs, interventions and policy. More
information is available on her blog: http://GeoFoodie.Org 
