Luke Owen

Luke Owen is Senior Research Assistant based in the Centre for Agroecology, Water and Resilience. He is a social scientist with a background in human geography, and specialises in a range of qualitative research methodologies and data analysis techniques.

Luke’s research interests include Alternative Food Networks and Short Food Chains and how they contribute to rural development and the livelihoods of small-scale food producers. Since 2011, he has presented extensively on these subjects at various conferences throughout Europe, and submitted his PhD about Short Food Chains in the UK and The Gambia, West Africa in 2014. Luke will be awarded his doctorate in 2015.

Luke is currently working on an EU FP7 funded project called TRADEIT, which is about knowledge brokerage, entrepreneurship and innovation amongst European Small-Medium Enterprises (SMEs) in the traditional food production sector. Moreover, Luke and his colleagues at Coventry University are developing a novel research agenda about the transformative role that digital spaces and technologies can have in creating and consolidating Short Food Chains, Civic Food Networks and localised food systems.

I am inspired by the need to find answers to the shortfalls of our contemporary food and agricultural systems. In all sorts of places and at a variety of scales, we need to better understand how to achieve more just, resilient and sustainable systems if the future of people and planet are to be secured. Through an interdisciplinary approach to research, I aim to explore and understand the relationships that food producers, citizens and consumers have with food, and the ways they are (dis)connected to the broader governance structures in which they are situated. I aim to work with a range of communities, professions and organisations to (re)connect different knowledge systems and areas of expertise. In doing so, solutions to the fundamental questions about our food production can be realised and routes to a more equitable and resilient future explored. If you share my vision, please get in touch.