Food Security for Equitable Futures

Short Courses - Food Security for Equitable Futures
2024-10-05 - 2024-10-06 | Private: India Habitat Centre, India
Here is an exciting opportunity!
Lancaster University in collaboration with IIT Kanpur has organized short courses for early career researchers and postgraduate students.

5th October – 6th October
9.30am – 5.30pm
India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India

Fully funded registration for all.
Travel stipends available on need basis.
Click here to apply. Deadline: 8th September, 2024

It will include multidisciplinary insights and perspective from renowned experts on food security and nutrition in India. Our expert panel includes …

Dr Sutapa Agarwal

Monitoring Evaluation and Research Expert

Prof Carlo Cafiero

Senior Statistician and Economist, The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Prof Jasmine Fledderjohann

Professor in Sociology and Social Justice, Lancaster University

Mr Biraj Patnaik

Executive Director, National Foundation for India

Mr V R Raman

National Convenor, Public Health Resource Network and
Executive Director, Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability

Prof Dipa Sinha

Independent Food Insecurity Expert

Prof Sukumar Vellakkal

Associate Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur

If you have any queries, please contact us at foodequity@lancaster.ac.uk.
You can follow us on X.
Interviews with experts in our Expert Interview Series is available to view on our YouTube channel.

Project team presenting at 20th Biennial ESHMS conference 2024: Intersectionality & Inclusion in Health
2024-07-04 08:30 - 10:00 (Europe/Dublin)
European Society of Health and Medical Sociology (ESHMS) Conference in Antwerp
Dr Charumita Vasudev will be presenting the paper : What a ‘Good Mother’ Eats: Food Choices, Sacrifices and the Politics of Provisioning at ESHMS conference.

Project team presented at Development Studies Association (DSA) conference 2024 at SOAS University of London
2024-06-26 - 2024-06-28
Social justice and development in a polarising world
rights and representation; redistribution and restoration; reproduction and production

Our very own Dr Rathi presented her paper titled ‘Food Insecurity, labour precarity and Debt in India: Links between Debt and Social Reproduction’ at DSA conference.

You can find session details here⬇️

https://www.devstud.org.uk/conference/conference-2024/programme/#14874

European Population Conference (EPC) 2024
2024-06-13 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Dublin)
Project team presenting at European Population Conference
Dr Charumita Vasudev will be presenting the paper titled ‘Understanding the Demographics of Food Insecurity: A Praxis-Oriented Reflexive Approach‘ at European Population Conference (EPC) 2024 in Edinburgh on 13 June.

Project team presenting at Population Association of America (PAA 2024), Annual Meeting
2024-04-17 - 2024-04-20
Project team presenting at Population Association of America (PAA 2024), Annual Meeting
Dr. Charumita Vasudev will be presenting a paper entitled – Understanding the demographics of food insecurity: A praxis-oriented reflexive approach . The paper questions the focus on objectivity in demographic research and suggests methods to generate data that is closer to the lived realities and can thus better inform policy.

British Journal of Sociology Conference, LSE, UK
2024-04-15 08:00 - 2024-04-16 17:00 (Europe/Dublin)
Project team will be presenting at the British Journal of Sociology Conference, 15-16 April 2024, LSE, UK

Dr Ankita Rathi will be discussing her paper titled ‘Food Insecurity, Labour Precarity, and Debt in India Links between Debt and Social Reproduction‘ in the upcoming BJS conference.
Dr Swayamshree Mishra will be discussing her paper titled ‘Research with children: Deciphering meaning-making and agency through an intersectional approach‘

Conference details can be found here. More information about the papers to follow.

Project team presenting at British Sociological Association (BSA 2024)
2024-04-03 - 2024-04-05
Project team presenting at British Sociological Association – Virtual Annual Conference 2024: Crisis, Continuity and Change
Dr. Charumita Vasudev will be presenting a paper entitled – What a ‘Good Mother’ Eats : Food Choices, Sacrifices and the Politics of Provisioning. This paper discusses how socially constructed ideals of a ‘good mother’ affect women’s daily choices, preferences , planning for and allocation of food within the family.

Symposium - The Politics and Practices of Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice
2024-02-16 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Dublin)
Roundtable with senior academics including our very own Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann at the Politics and Practices of Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice at School Of The Arts Library – University of Liverpool, Liverpool.

BMC Medicine is calling for submissions!!
2023-11-07 00:00 - 2024-11-06 00:00 (Europe/Dublin)
Call for papers on Food environments and health is LIVE NOW. You can find more details on the link here.

Our very own Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann is part of the guest editorial team, and will be editing this Special Collection from BMC Medicine on food environments and their impact on public health.

LAARG Reading Group
2023-10-27 12:00 - 13:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
Lancaster Asia Area Research Group (LAARG)
Reading Group October 2023
Date: Friday, 27th October
Time: 12 – 1pm
Venue: Lancaster University
Dr. Swayamshree Mishra will be leading an open discussion on the reading by Professor Janaki Abraham called ‘What will the neighbours say?’: Legitimacy, Social Control and the Sociocultural Influence of Neighbourhoods in India.
This article talks about the importance and influence of neighbourhood on lives of the people, their behaviour and how it shapes their preferences in Indian context, while also highlighting how gender is produced in these settings. This article argues that the narrative of neighbourhood is as vital as caste, class, ethnicity or religion.

Dr Swayamshree Mishra's talk at the University of Oxford
2023-10-26 16:00 - 17:30 (Europe/Dublin)
Dr Swayamshree Mishra will be presenting a talk on ‘Food, education, and aspirations: An intra-household narrative analysis of the mid-day meal scheme in India’ on 26th Oct at the University of Oxford.

This is a hybrid event, open for all to attend. You can join on zoom.
Details
https://talks.ox.ac.uk/…/aa40d3f0-e262-4a55-bb20…/

Free seminar, but registration is required before 2pm on 26th
https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx…

LAARG Reading Group
2023-06-26 14:30 - 15:30 (Europe/Dublin) | Online via MS Teams
Lancaster Asia Area Research Group (LAARG)
Reading Group June 2023
Date: Monday, 26th June
Time: 2.30 – 3.30pm
Venue: Online on MS Teams
This session is open for all to attend.
Dr. Charumita Vasudev will be leading an open discussion on the reading by Ajantha Subramanian called ‘Meritocracy and Democracy: Indian Reservations and the Politics of Caste’.
This article talks about India’s move towards an embrace of caste quotas, or reservations, as a necessary mechanism of recompense and redistribution. The author takes up the tensions between different approaches to democracy and their implications for addressing historical inequalities.

Project Workshop - 2
2023-01-19 09:00 - 17:00 (Asia/Kolkata)
In this Project Workshop, the research team led by Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann and supported by Drs. Ankita Rathi, Charumita Vasudev, and Swayamshree Mishra will interact with key stakeholders of the project. The workshop will include the following:

Fieldwork team presentation on challenges and early insights from the field
Open discussion with stakeholders, including covering:

Thoughts on fieldwork challenges and addressing them
Views on initial findings
Thoughts on how our work can be helpful for stakeholders—anything we are doing especially useful? Not useful? Anything we should be doing, but aren’t?
Thoughts on how our findings can be used to meaningfully improve lives.

Expert Interview Series: Mr V R Raman on Food Insecurity in India
2022-08-18 10:00 - 11:30 (Europe/Dublin) | Online via MS Teams
In the 5th episode of our “Expert Interview Series”, Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, Principal Investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures project, speaks to Mr V R Raman, an expert on various social development systems and policies, especially in relation to the Indian subcontinent. He completed his post-graduate studies in Public Health at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa and his graduate studies in English language and literature at the University of Calicut, Kerala, India. Over the last three decades, Mr. Raman has worked closely with most of the state-led flagship social development missions in India, such as the National Literacy Mission, National Health Mission, Swachh Bharat (Sanitation) Mission, Jal Jeevan (Drinking Water) Mission and Poshan Abhiyan (Nutrition Mission). In addition, he is a co-founder and leader of some of the noted and mass-scale community health and nutrition programs and a few important state-civil society partnership organisations. Through his work, Mr Raman has explored gender, physical and social vulnerabilities and how they can be alleviated to build a human rights and dignity-based equitable society. He is currently the National Convenor of the Public Health Resource Network in India and is associated with several organisations and people’s campaigns.
In this interview, Mr. Raman identifies the various interconnected dimensions of food insecurity in India. Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann and Mr Raman discuss the following issues that have a direct bearing on food insecurity in India:
• The links between water and sanitation with food insecurity and malnourishment,
• The structural challenges farmers are facing,
• The inadequacy and problems of market-based solutions in addressing the structural challenges of hunger and food insecurity,
• The challenges of inflation and price hikes and their impact on the lives of the masses,
• How much state-led schemes are able to address food insecurity,
• The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on food security,
• The need to move away from a market-centric economic model to a people-centric economy and,
• The need to refine data collection and monitoring practices to generate research geared toward identifying and alleviating food insecurity.

Expert Interview Series: Dr Vuong Ngoc Thuy on Food Insecurity in Vietnam
2022-07-01 09:00 - 10:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Online via MS Teams
In the fourth episode of our “Expert Interview Series”, Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, the Principal Investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures Project, speaks to Dr Vuong Ngoc Thuy, an expert on issues of food insecurity in Vietnam. Dr Vuong is a researcher/lecturer at the Institute of Ho Chi Minh City Public Health. Her research focuses on food insecurity and nutrition and food-borne and water-borne diseases. She has experience working with vulnerable sub-populations, especially the ethnic minority groups, the elderly and children. Dr Vuong is making efforts to shape policies to improve food security and nutrition in Vietnam for vulnerable sub-populations by providing accurate and reliable scientific evidence for policymakers.
In this interview, Dr Vuong offers her thoughts on food security in Vietnam in the larger context of the socio-economic structures and challenges the country will face in the short and long term. Dr Vuong highlights the structural similarities that Vietnam shares with other Low- and Middle-income Countries (LMICs) and how they are connected to global food insecurity. She points out that the biggest challenge Vietnam faces on the food security front is that of agricultural production and how factors such as climate variability, lack of fresh water, overdependence on chemical fertilisers and the high price of agricultural inputs affect food production. Dr Vuong also highlights how the CoVID-19 pandemic disrupted the food system, thus affecting food security and diet diversity for the Vietnamese population. Dr Vuong Ngoc also brings the disproportionate impact the pandemic had on the food security of vulnerable groups such as disabled people, the elderly, daily wage labourers, children, and pregnant women to the centre of the conversation.
Dr Vuong also talks about the measures that can be taken to keep the crisis from worsening and improve the country’s food security. Dr Vuong highlights the potential “climate-smart agriculture” as a solution holds for Vietnam in addressing the problem of food insecurity as it can help produce affordable and healthy foods for the people and, at the same time, rehabilitate the environment. Dr Vuong stresses the point that improving the food distribution mechanisms to reduce inequity in the food system and food waste must be a central objective for any policy that aims to address food insecurity.

Expert Interview Series: Dr Alula Pankhurst on Food Insecurity in Ethiopia
2022-06-27 12:00 - 13:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Online via MS Teams
Dr Alula Pankhurst is a social anthropologist, and the Country Director for Young Lives Ethiopia since 2009. His role involves coordinating Young Lives research in Ethiopia and leading on topics including urban relocation, child work, early marriage and violence against children. In addition, he has been involved in policy dialogue on child marriage, FGM, and early childhood and youth development. Dr Pankhurst is a founding member of the Child Research and Practice Forum, a Board member of the Ethiopia Heritage Trust, a former board member of the Ethiopian Society of Sociologists, Social Workers and Anthropologists, and the former Board Chair of the Forum for Social Studies. He also serves on the Independent Council of Economic Advisors to the Ethiopian government and the Society of Friends of the Institute of Ethiopian Studies of Addis Ababa University.
In this interview with Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, the Principal Investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures Project, Dr Pankhurst offers an empirically grounded account of recent food insecurity trends in Ethiopia. Prof. Pankhurst highlights how the climate crisis has accelerated food insecurity. Dr Pankhurst offers an insightful description of the complexity of food insecurity in Ethiopia and how it is cumulatively worsened by factors such as conflict, drought, changes in land holding, and global developments, most recently including the ongoing war in Ukraine. Dr Pankhurst also discusses some recent findings from his research, such as the link between anxiety and mental distress with food insecurity among households. Dr Pankhurst’s future research entails studying the trends in and consequences of intergenerational malnutrition in Ethiopia and understanding regional variations of food insecurity and their links to larger structural issues such as drought, pests (such as locust infestations), land holding patterns and mental health.

Expert Interview Series: Dr Eduardo Zegarra on Food Insecurity in Peru
2022-06-06 15:00 - 16:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Online via MS Teams
In this video, the second in our Expert Interview Series, Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann, lead investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures, interviews Dr Eduardo Zegarra Méndez about his views on food insecurity in Peru. Dr Zegarra is an economist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and has a PhD in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Wisconsin, specializing in rural development and natural resource management. Dr Zegarra has been working as a Senior Researcher at the Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE) in Lima, Peru, since 2004.
In this interview, Dr Zegarra shares insights about his experience studying the trends in food insecurity in Peru and how gaps in state policy can be plugged to address food insecurity and improve agricultural practices and rural development. Dr Zegarra also shares insights gained from his work with state institutions and how policies can be designed and implemented to address food insecurity in the short term and the long term whilst negotiating recurring crises of the global system.

Food Insecurity & Reproductive Justice at ReproFest!
2022-04-29 09:30 - 16:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Lancaster University, Lancaster, United Kingdom
Food Security for Equitable Futures project PI Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann will be presenting her latest work from the project at this year’s ReproFest in Preston on 29th of April. The event runs all day, but Dr. Fledderjohann will be speaking at 11:30am. She will be talking about the range of ways that food insecurity is a barrier to Reproductive Justice globally.
This is a FREE one day DROP IN ANYTIME event about reproductive justice, health and rights prioritising the experience of people who may be treated unfairly in reproductive decision-making. You can find out more and register through Eventbrite at this link.

Expert Interview Series: Dr. Lam Van Phong on Food Insecurity in Vietnam
2022-04-15 08:00 - 17:00 (Europe/Dublin) | Online via MS Teams
In this video, the first in our Expert Interview Series, Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann, lead investigator on the Food Security for Equitable Futures, interviews Dr. Lam Van Phong about his views on food insecurity in Vietnam. Dr. Lam Van is a medical doctor in the Nutrition and Dietics Department at Nguyen Tri Phuong Hospital in Vietnam.
In this interview, Dr. Lam Van shares his insights about his experience working as a frontline healthcare worker during the Covid-19 pandemic, with focus on the implications of the pandemic for nutrition and food insecurity. He also shares his personal experiences with food insecurity during the pandemic, and reflects on next steps for addressing food insecurity in Vietnam.

Project Newsletter Issue 3
2022-03-18
Our third issue of the project newsletter is out! In this issue, you can meet our newest team member; learn about the presentations and research results from the project including findings on education and food insecurity in India, publication of a National Centre for Research Methods Wayfinder Guide on equitable research partnerships, and new research examining food insecurity as a Reproductive Justice Issue. You can click on the link below to access the newsletter:
Project Newsletter Issue 3 March 2022

NCRM Wayfinder Guide Published
2022-02-11
In 2021, project PI Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann served as a breakout room facilitator for Research at a Distance: Changing Approaches & Equitable Partnerships event. This event was organized by Dr. Adrian Healy (a fellow Future Leaders Fellow), in collaboration with several other fellows. The event focused on adapting research in the Global South under Covid constraints with an eye on equity. The event led to co-development of an National Centre for Research Methods Wayfinder guide to equitable research relations in and after Covid-19 in collaboration with international stakeholders.
This guide was published in 2022 as a collaboration between Adrian Healy, Artwell Kadungure, Constance Smith, Erin McFee, Eve Nakebembe, Isabel Jones, Jasmine Fledderjohann, Katie McQuaid, Kirsty Le Doare, Sana Contractor and Sabrina Rashid as part of a series produced from the Changing Research Methods for Covid-19 Research Project. It is freely available for download.

Researching Inequalities: Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann's CASEI Interview by Dr Michael Lambert
2021-11-02
Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann (Twitter: @JFledderjohann1), Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University was recently interviewed by Dr Michael Lambert (Twitter: @GrandCamouflage), the Research and Engagement Lead for the Centre for Alternatives to Social and Economic Inequalities (CASEI).
CASEI (Twitter: @CaseiLancaster), based at Lancaster University Sociology Department, is an inter-disciplinary Centre researching on causes and solutions to a wide range of inequalities.
In this interview, Dr Fledderjohann talks about Food Security for Equitable Futures project (Twitter: @Food_Equity) and other ventures she is involved with. She also explains her work on measurement, social causes and consequences of inequalities.
You can watch this interview video on our YouTube channel.

Press Article in Big Issue North
2021-10-19
We are very pleased to announce that Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann’s article, that she drafted along with Dr Amy Clair and Dr Bran Knowles, is published in the Big Issue North – Big Issue North is a charity based news-magazine that promotes socially conscious media content.
The article entitled ‘Why Don’t We Just… make policy that fulfils human rights?‘, highlights how the social problems observed during the pandemic in fact stem from long-standing structural inequalities linked to erosion of social protection policies over the past several decades.
Hope you enjoy this read!

Project Newsletter Issue 2
2021-10-05
The second issue of the newsletter is out. In this issue, you can find progress of the project, and other activities project team has been involved with. It also lists some milestones that have been achieved. Please click on the link below to access it:
Project Newsletter Issue2 _ October 2021 _ Food Security For Equitable Futures

Our team presenting talks at BSPS conference
2021-09-14 12:00 - 2021-09-15 16:30 (Europe/Dublin)
British Society for Population Studies (BSPS) virtual Conference 14-15 September 2021
Our team has organized food insecurity sessions in the BSPS conference.

Dr Thomas Argaw will be chairing the session on:

Food insecurity: Social & environmental determinants of food & nutrition security – 14th September 12pm – 1pm

Don’t forget to check Dr Thomas Argaw’s talk on:

Sociodemographic gradients in food insecurity in India – 15th September 3.15pm – 4.15pm
Register at:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/british-society-for-population-studies-virtual-conference-2021-tickets-165899009403

Book Launch Event
2021-07-20 14:00 - 15:30 (Europe/Dublin)
Launch of the new book ‘A Watershed Moment for Social Policy and Human Rights? Where next for the UK Post-COVID’, by Drs Amy Clair, Jasmine Fledderjohann, and Bran Knowles, available 25th June through Policy Press.

Register on Eventbrite to attend the Book Launch Event.

Project Launch Workshop
2021-03-03 12:00 - 13:00 UTC | Online via MS Teams
The aim of this workshop is to engage in knowledge exchange with stakeholders to ensure that the project will be well-grounded in local knowledge, and be relevant and useful to stakeholders and policymakers.

'Food Security for Equitable Futures' project launch
2020-10-21 10:00 (Europe/Dublin)
Food Security for Equitable Futures
A UKRI funded project exploring how lives in the Global South are shaped by undernourishment and hunger.
