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Food and Heritage

Learning Event: Food and Heritage (University of Leeds, UK 10 January 2020)

 

In collaboration with Dr Tahrat Shahid, Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) Challenge Leader for Food Systems at UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), this 1-day workshop aims to ask critical questions about how Arts and Humanities Research Council-Global Challenges Research Fund (AHRC-GCRF) multi-disciplinary collaborations navigate the balance between the local and the global. The arts and humanities offer approaches to global development that attend to local context, unlocking and mobilizing local knowledge as a way of addressing development challenges. How can arts and humanities research projects attend to this crucial context, while also addressing the need to scale up learning so that it can inform development work more broadly?

Keynote speakers include: Professor Naomi Sykes (The Lawrence Professor of Archaeology at the University of Exeter), Professor Henrice Altink (Professor in Modern History and Co-Director of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre at the University of York), Dr Sandip Hazareesingh (Director of the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University) and Dr Theano Moussouri (Senior Lecturer in Museum Studies at University College London).

Tahrat Shahid (Co-Convenor) Ukri Challenge Leader Food Systems Praxis Tahrat Shahid began her career as a corporate debt advisory analyst after which she co-founded a non-profit organisation offering free burns and reconstructive surgery in Bangladesh. Afterwards, her work ranged from macroeconomic analysis at the Central Bank of Turkey in Ankara to poverty and social impact analysis at the World Bank in Washington, DC. She focused on impact evaluation at Oxford Policy Management, with particular projects on agricultural cooperatives in Rwanda and mobile banking in Kenya. Prior to joining GCRF, she also led research for advocacy on agricultural policy, food security, and nutrition in Sub-Saharan Africa for the ONE Campaign's Global Policy Team in London. She is currently writing a book on the results of her doctoral work titled 'Imaginary Lines? Islam and Secularism in the Politics of Family Laws in Bangladesh.

Naomi Sykes (Keynote) Deep-Time Perspectives On Future Foods Professor Naomi Sykes holds the Lawrence Chair in Archaeology at the University of Exeter and is Director of the HumAnE Centre for Bioarchaeology. Her research focuses on human-animal-environment interactions and how they inform on the structure, ideology, impact and well-being of societies, past and present. Her approach is to integrate archaeological data with wider scientific evidence (especially DNA and stable isotope analysis) and discussions from anthropology, cultural geography, (art) history and linguistics. Together these ancient data represent a powerful tool for contextualising modern problems facing humanity and for communicating difficult issues in a palatable format.

Sandip Hazareesingh (Keynote) Food Memories and Stories From Karnataka Women Farmers Dr Sandip Hazareesingh is Director of the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies in the School of Arts and Cultures at the Open University. He is currently interested in arts and humanities approaches to food, agriculture, environment, and climate in South Asia. His GCRF project in collaboration with the Karnataka based NGO Green Foundation, Changing Farming Lives in South India, Past and Present, explores the potential of oral history, and its expressions in film and sound, to support women farmers' cultural creativity in developing resilience to the challenges of food security and climate change.

Henrice Altink (Keynote) Historical And Epidemiological Transitions In Urban Caribbean Foodscapes: Understanding The Past To Enhance Future Healthy Eating Henrice Altink is Professor in Modern History and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Global Development centre at the University of York. She has written extensively about race and gender in the Caribbean during slavery and freedom and more recently has also worked on health and environment in the Caribbean region. She is the author of: Representations of slave women: discourses on slavery and abolition, 1780-1838 (2007); Destined for a life of service: Defining African-Jamaican womanhood, 1865-1938 (2011); and Public Secrets: race and colour in colonial and independent Jamaica (2019).

Theano Moussouri (Keynote) Food Heritage For Global Challenges Theano Moussouri is Associate Professor at UCL Institute of Archaeology. Her research looks at how people construct knowledge and make meaning from visiting museums and heritage sites. She is also interested in the relationship between disciplinary knowledge and everyday knowledge. She is currently on the Editorial Board of Museum & Society, the Science Museum Group Journal and Associate Editor for Curator: The Museums Journal.

Follow @Changing_Story_ for updates throughout the workshop.

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