Agroecological innovations; Popular education; Social movements; Participatory methodologies; Environmental and social justice

I use sustainable food systems as a focus for transdisciplinary and participatory research, teaching and practice. While I currently focus on food, agriculture, and social movements, more generally I am interested in collective struggles for social and environmental justice. In this regard, the work I do is based around harnessing the power of popular education, participatory methodologies, and rich deliberation to define and develop actually existing forms of just, democratic, and sustainable food systems.

In January 2018, I began a British Academy-funded research project aimed at developing the latest theory on innovation processes and drawing from bottom-up knowledge exchange processes and community economies theory to propose new ways to scale-up agroecological innovation. In many respects, the food system is a deeply unjust place, determined by increasingly fewer people with increasingly more money and power. I am interested in working with organisations who are finding new ways to challenge and undermine this power – whether through innovating new ways of sharing and owning technology, of accessing markets, or of promoting and building democratic governance.

By analysing the bottom-up processes of horizontal knowledge exchange and interactive innovation in agroecology networks, this project will present a more holistic theory of innovation that can better harness the economic, social, cultural and political processes needed to develop a just and sustainable food system.