Agroecology; Food Regimes; Neoliberalism; Food Sovereignty; Political Ecology; Ecological Sustainability and Social Equity; Hedgerows, Biodiversity Conservation and Climate Change Mitigation 

Dr Mark Tilzey is Associate Professor in Political Ecology and the Governance of Food Systems for Resilience. His research interests lie in political ecology, food regimes, agrarian change and agroecology, agri-environmental politics and governance, and the international political economy of agri-food systems. Mark is also a qualified ecologist with a particular interest in landscape and historical ecology. He has taken a lead role in a significant number of research projects, including a Leverhulme Trust project addressing Agricultural Multifunctionality in the WTO (a multi-country study exploring the relationship between neoliberalism and agricultural sustainability), DEFRA/CEH/FERA/NERC AgriLand, Natural England (EU Agri-Environmental Policy), Carnegie Trust UK (Asset-based Rural Development), UK Food Group (Mapping UK Government Thinking on Globalisation). Mark has published journal articles, book chapters, and monographs addressing sustainable agriculture, political economy and the governance of food systems, political ecology, and agri-environmental policy. His research currently focuses on the political ecology of neoliberalism in the agri-food and environment sectors, changes in agri-food and environmental governance, and on the study of interest groups and social movements proposing/opposing these trends, and on nature-society relations more broadly. These concerns focus around ‘post-development’ theory in which there is a foregrounding of ecological sustainability and social equity issues, with particular reference to agroecology and food sovereignty. Mark has undertaken research in Europe, Australia, North America, Latin America, and the Asia-Pacific region. He has most recently been working on Political Ecology, Food Regimes, and Food Sovereignty, and addressing counter-hegemonic movements in the Global South, particularly Latin America, struggling for livelihood sovereignty. He is also working currently on transitions to agroecology and food sovereignty in the global North, addressing inter alia the role of agroforestry in these transitions. He is currently working on a book entitled 'Peasant Wars, Rural Movements, and the New World Order' (Routledge) commemmorating and revisiting the work of the late Eric R Wolf.

My research is inspired by the imperative to build future societies that have both social equity and ecological sustainability at their heart, founded on a synergy, rather than ‘balance’, between these elements. I see agroecology as lying at the heart of this vision, one that, with appropriate policies and institutions, has the capacity to deliver food security, biodiversity and natural resource conservation, climate stability and social justice. My research focuses on the political economy and ecology of the opportunities and constraints that surround efforts to ‘mainstream’ agroecology into the structures of agricultural, food and environmental governance. In particular, I am interested in the dynamics of conformity, accommodation, resistance, and opposition to currently dominant neoliberal forms of agri-food and environmental governance.

Areas of Expertise:

• Political Ecology
• Political Economy
• Agri-Food and Environmental Governance
• Critical Discourse Analysis
• Agriculture and Biodiversity
• Conservation
• Historical Ecology