Short Courses – Food Security for Equitable Futures
Lancaster University in collaboration with IIT Kanpur has organized short courses for early career researchers and postgraduate students. It will include multidisciplinary insights and perspective from renowned experts on food security and nutrition in India.
Fully funded registration for all. Travel stipends available on need basis.
Click here for further details.
____________________________________________________________________
UK Parliamentary Networking Event
Saadia Shah, Project Impact & Engagement Lead, represented our Food Security for Equitable Futures project in a Parliamentary Networking Event on 22nd May 2024, which took place in the UK Parliament building (Portcullis House), London. It was a well-attended event joined by different units of the UK Parliament including MPs, UK Parliament’s Knowledge Exchange Unit, Parliament’s Senior Partnerships Officer, and academics, researchers, knowledge mobiliser and other experts in the field.
Saadia presented project work to key individuals to seek feedback on the policy engagement the project has been part of. She discussed future plans for policy engagement and explored different avenues to work with Parliament.
___________________________________________________________________
Latest episode of our Expert Interview Series with Prof Dipa Sinha is OUT!!
In this video, Dr Charumita Vasudev, qualitative postdoc on the project, interviews Prof Dipa Sinha on her work on food security and child malnutrition in India. Prof Dipa Sinha is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Ambedkar University, New Delhi. She has worked alongside the Office of Commissioners to the Indian Supreme Court, specifically focusing on the Right to Food, and remains actively engaged with the Right to Food Campaign in India. Her research focuses on public policy, gender, health, and nutrition.
___________________________________________________________________
Written Evidence on the UK Government’s work on achieving SDG2: Zero Hunger.
In October 2023, the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee called for written evidence on foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and wider UK Government’s work on hunger and nutrition around the world and work towards achieving Zero Hunger by 2030 in line with SDG2. The evidence examined the impact on this work of significant ongoing cuts to the UK aid budget. Our project team responded, making recommendations to the committee, which was published on 23rd January 2024.
UK Gov Zero Hunger Call for Evidence_final
______________________________________________________________________
Symposium – The Politics and Practices of Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice
In spring 2023, the UK Parliament’s International Development Committee called for written evidence on whether aid money spent by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) on sexual and reproductive health programmes in Global Majority countries could be targeted more effectively. The team responded making recommendations to the committee, which was published on 2nd May 2023.
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.
_____________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________
6th issue of our Newsletter is out NOW!!
- Check out some thought-provoking stories from the field work in India around Food Insecurity
- Evidence submitted to the UK Parliament for sexual & reproductive health programmes
- Latest on Expert Interviews & many more..
_____________________________________________________________________
Dr. Swayamshree Mishra’s talk at the University of Oxford
_____________________________________________________________________
Dr. Charumita Vasudev’s contribution to the news article in The Hindu
The research by Food Security for Equitable Futures project is making its mark globally. Well done Dr. Charumita Vasudev for your valuable input to The Hindu newspaper for the article ‘A ‘silent’ burden | Who cares for women living with diabetes?’
_____________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Press release!!
Hot out of press is the news item discussing the paper ‘Children’s Educational Outcomes and Persistence and Severity of Household Food Insecurity in India: Longitudinal Evidence from Young Lives‘, led by Dr. Thomas Argaw, and co-authored by Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann, Dr. Elisabetta Aurino and Dr. Sukumar Vellakkal.
This paper adds to a small but growing literature exploring how household food insecurity is associated with children’s educational outcomes in the Global South. The team found that food insecurity is associated with fewer years of completed education and lower maths and vocabulary scores. More persistent and more severe food insecurity compounded the negative effects of household food insecurity on children’s learning outcomes. Addressing household food insecurity in childhood and adolescence may be a key factor to improve children’s educational outcomes.
The paper has generated interest among journalists and the general public. NutritionInsight also wrote a feature piece about the article, which included in-depth comments from Dr. Argaw. There are around 20 news and blog sites circulating this paper authored by our team.
_______________________________________________________________________
The latest issue of our Newsletter is out!
The fourth issue of our Newsletter provides updates on the research and engagement activities that our team has undertaken since March 2022, such as the team’s participation in the 117th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association. The Newsletter introduces our new team members, Drs Ankita Rathi, Charumita Vasudev, and Swayamshree Mishra, and also includes a list of recent publications that have come out of the project so far. The Newsletter can be downloaded here.
_______________________________________________________________________
New article in The Conversation: 8 billion people: why trying to control the population is often futile – and harmful
Alarmism about population growth has a long and chequered history. On one side are concerns that there are too many people, and that sheer numbers are causing our current environmental crisis. On the other side are arguments that we have too few people. Elon Musk has said that “population collapse due to low fertility rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming”. And a recent column in the Sunday Times naively argued that the UK should “tax the childless” in order to address declining fertility rates. Our own Dr. Jasmine Fledderjohann in collaboration with Dr. Melanie Channon highlight the dangers population alarmism in their latest article for The Conversation. Read more here
_______________________________________________________________________
Job Opportunity: Qualitative Post-Doctoral Researcher (x1)
The post-doctoral fellow will report to the project’s India PI- Dr Sukumar Vellakkal, Department of Economic sciences, IIT Kanpur. The post-doctoral fellow will also collaborate with Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann (the lead PI at Lancaster University, UK) as well as with 2 qualitative post-doctoral fellows and 1 quantitative post-doctoral fellow from Lancaster University, UK. The candidate will join a team of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods researchers to contribute to data collection in India and data analysis. For more see here
Application Deadline: 25th August 2022
_______________________________________________________________
Feeding the Future? Evidence on Food Insecurity in the UK
Although there is ample evidence that food insecurity is a long-term and pressing social problem in the UK, policy responses have been inadequate to ensure the right to food is being met for all. UK Government data show ~1-in-7 households faced food insecurity in 2019-2020, and in February 2022 around 1 million adults in the UK reported that, during the past month, someone in their household had to go a whole day without eating due to difficulties affording or accessing food. Marginalised groups, including households in receipt of Universal Credit, face disproportionately high risks of food insecurity. Austerity, Covid, poverty, and the climate crisis are all drivers of this pressing social problem. Food charities have sought to help food insecure households as best they can but, as this policy brief explains, charities are ultimately unable to fix the large-scale structural drivers of food insecurity. In order to address food insecurity in both the short-term and the long-term, urgent Government action is needed to scale up social protection and reduce carbon emissions. This includes, but is not limited to, removal of conditionalities and scaling up of Universal Credit and other income support programs.
A new policy brief, summarising the issues, can be found here: Food Insecurities Policy Brief
For further details, contact Dr Jasmine Fledderjohann (j.fledderjohann@lancaster.ac.uk).
_______________________________________________________________________
Job Opportunity: Qualitative Post-Doctoral Researcher (x2)
You will join a mixed-methods team to work on primary data collection in India and data analysis on Dr. Fledderjohann’s project, which focuses on food insecurity in India, Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Peru. In your first months on the project, you will work with Dr. Fledderjohann, project co-investigator Dr. Sukumar Vellakkal (IIT Kanpur), and two other qualitative postdocs to collect data on food insecurity and family life in Uttar Pradesh and Goa. For more see here
