Eating Well: Experience and Value in Meals
University of Warwick 27 March 2015
Early Career and PhD Researchers research abstracts and profiles
Dr. Martine J. Barons is a postdoctoral research fellow working in the Department of Statistics with
Professor Jim Q. Smith on an EPSRC-funded project ‘Coherent inference over a network of
probabilistic systems for decision support with applications to food security.’ This is joint work with
Prof. Liz Dowler, Sociology, and Dr Rosemary Collier, Director of Warwick crop Centre.
Martine has BSc Mathematics, MSc in Complexity Science and a PhD in Complexity Science and
Health Sciences entitled ‘What is the added value of using non-linear models to explore complex
healthcare datasets?’
In her current research, Martine is working with Jim Smith to find the conditions under which expert
judgements, which may themselves be based on experimental data, can be networked together
coherently to provide decision support for policy makers tasked with managing large and complex
systems. Martine & Jim are applying the theoretical results they are developing to a decision
support system for the UK food system. They are working in collaboration with Warwickshire
County Council (WCC) and have held several decision conferences to elicit the measures of most
relevance to the policy decisions local councils are required to make relating to food poverty.
Martine has recently joined Warwickshire Food for Health Group and is contributing to the
development of a new food strategy for Warwickshire, in collaboration with WCC officers and health
professionals.
Martine is keen to help members of the general public to appreciate and enjoy the outputs of
academic research. Last summer she gave a Café Scientifique talk for a general audience in
Leamington Spa called "UK food security in the twenty-first century”. Leading on from that she was
invited and gave another talk, this time at Leamington Spa Food and Drink Festival, "Food - the web
that connects us all". Martine was awarded funding from Warwick University to set up and run a
public engagement practitioners groups which brought together members of staff from across
academic disciplines and administration who work face-to-face with members of the public.
Laura Gottlieb, MA Information Experience Design, Royal College of Art, London
Designing encounters and objects to prompt philosophical discourse.
Abstract: My practice and research is centered on designing encounters and objects, which prompt
philosophical discourse. This is explored through different case studies, which take place in the
context of an afternoon tea where discussion is prompted through the tableware, menu, keywords
and questions. Food and drink as well as the tableware is used to symbolize different
ideas/keywords and are introduced and discussed at different stages of the teatime. The case
studies try to answer questions around how the teatime participants interact with the objects (i.e.
food, tableware), and the time/space that stimulates this kind of discourse. The project also
investigates the role of facilitation in these encounters. The aim of this project is to create spaces
that give people the time to reflect and share perspective on existential topics and questions of
personal interest. The research situates itself between the fields of design, philosophy and learning
and hopes to assist in people’s philosophical development through communities of inquiry.
Sophie Greenway, PhD student, Centre for the History of Medicine, Warwick
Project title: Growing well: Dirt, health and the home gardener in Britain, 1930-65
s.a.greenway@warwick.ac.uk
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/students/eportfolios/hypnad/
I am in the first year of doctoral study, investigating the relationship between concepts of dirt as
healthy soil and dirt as germ-laden filth, in the context of domestic vegetable growing and
consumption in mid-twentieth-century Britain. I aim to explore the changing nature of hygienic
domesticity and to consider whether this was predicated on the notion of the garden as 'dirty'. This
work will focus on cultural understandings of ideas of germs and health in the context of food
growing, and will use sources from commercial advertising, medical authorities, educational bodies
and community groups such as the Women's Institute. The mid-twentieth century is particularly
interesting because of the rise of industrialised farming and the response of the nascent organic
movement in this period. The organic movement was the only organisation at that time making a
direct link between soil and human health, and thus placing the soil central to their work. My project
will look at definitions and appropriations of the ‘modern’ and the ‘expert’, and the ways in which
cultural shifts related to food growing have impacted on the food systems of today.
Gurpinder Singh Lalli, Lecturer, Education, Childhood and Family Studies, University of
Wolverhampton, gurpinder.lalli@wlv.ac.uk; Final Year PhD Student, University of Leicester,
gl94@le.ac.uk
An Ethnographic Case Study of the impact of food upon the learning environment at Peartree
Academy
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of food upon learning and social
skills at a school that I have chosen to call the Peartree Academy. The main research question
addresses the impact of food on learning. The focus lies on exploring the social and life skills which
pupils develop through meeting, making choices, eating and talking together in an inviting
‘restaurant culture’ rather than the traditional ‘school canteen’. This study uses a qualitative
research framework for data collection. The study is written as an ethnographic case study,
adopting a social constructivist position in framing the theoretical aspect of the research. The
report provides a discussion around the selected qualitative research methods, which include
interviews, observations and documentary evidence. During the observations carried out in the
restaurant, I came across an interesting set of ‘staff personalities’ and the role that they played in
their interaction with pupils in the school restaurant. These included the ‘animated’, ‘observational’
and ‘sociable’ staff members. Drawing on the data from some of the interviews collected,
interviews carried out with the Catering Manager and Attendance Leader at the School identified
how the restaurant differs from other schools. The school at which the research takes place has
been anonymised. Upon the collection of the main data set, this study is now moving towards the
latter stages with a draft of the thesis almost complete.
Key words: School Food, Social Skills, Ethnography, School Environment, Pedagogic Meal
Ariane Lengyel, University of West London
Celebrity Chefs and the Construction of Taste in Contemporary British Society
Abstract: Food is an essential part of our lives and is no longer simply a physiological function. The
study of food is essential to understand important social and cultural implications that influence
society. Taste is intrinsically linked to food, both from a gustatory aspect as well as from an aesthetic
perspective. As such, taste acts as a social discriminator and infers notions of choice. Within this
arena, the celebrity chef has become an important part of contemporary British society as an actor
in transmitting concepts of taste and distinction through television and written media. The celebrity
chef has become a modern cultural figure that embodies notions of contemporary shifts in attitudes
towards gender, cooking, ethics, consumption, culinary taste and cultural capital. This is work in
progress and the data will be collected through discourse analysis which will yield principally
qualitative information but may also include quantitative data. This will involve the systematic and
sustained viewing of chosen celebrity chef television shows as well as reading and analysing
associated cookbooks. This study will seek to determine by what means celebrity chefs influence the
construction of taste as this specific association remains under-examined. The conclusions of the
study may propose that the chefs are influential in conveying messages of public health, lifestyle and
food choices through their TV shows and cookbooks and are therefore key players as a wider
sociological phenomenon in contemporary British society.
Keywords: Food, taste, celebrity chef, media, lifestyle
Surinder Phull, Senior Lecturer in Nutrition at the University of West London
I am currently in the 2nd year of my PhD at the University of Hertfordshire under the supervision of
Wendy Wills : The title is: ‘Is it a pleasure to eat together?’ Examining the role of conviviality in the
Mediterranean diet model: A comparative study of family mealtime experiences in Spain and the UK.
I am using qualitative methods including interviews and visual methods to explore the mealtime
experiences of families in the UK and Spain and will be starting my data collection this week!
Catherine Price, PhD Student, Sociology Department, Warwick
Coverage of Genetically Modified Food: UK Elite News Website Online Articles and Online Comments
and Twitter
My research is focusing on science communication with a specific emphasis on genetically modified
(GM) food. I am particularly interested in how the public perceive GM foods. As the media is the
primary source of information about science for adults, my research will be investigating how GM
foods are reported in online news articles on UK news websites. I will also be examining the online
comments to ascertain how the news articles frame the discussion that follows along with
establishing the issues that are discussed. Finally, I intend to explore how the news articles are
shared on Twitter and by whom. This research will seek to provide information and knowledge
about the role of online news articles and their influence on the public about GM foods. It will also
attempt to establish whether science is important to the public when discussing GM foods or if they
have wider ranging interests or concerns.
Charlotte Spring, Department of Human Geography, University of Salford (1st year PhD candidate)
Working title: An ethnography of surplus food redistribution (SFR) in Manchester: a ‘win-win’
solution to food waste and hunger?
Background:
> Evidence of growing hunger and high levels of food waste in the UK have gained in visibility in
popular media and have spurred a wealth of research and inquiry inc. All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry
into Hunger report (Feeding Britain 2014). Framing ranges in focus: environmental, food security,
social justice etc.
> A number of organisations have responded to this so-called ‘paradox’ by redistributing surplus
food to hungry people (historically, this is not new: food aid in the US has been a policy response to
farm surplus and hunger since the 1930s Depression, constructing ‘needy populations/bodies’ in
specific ways e.g. Poppendieck 1986).
> In Greater Manchester, this includes food banks and other relief organisations receiving and
distributing surplus, including FareShare, a national food redistribution charity with a Manchester
hub. Other approaches are more ‘community-development’-oriented/activist e.g. The Real Junk
Food Project, FoodCycle, Disco Soup.
Key questions:
> Does surplus food redistribution offer a solution to the problems of hunger and food waste, or is it
simply managing an issue whose root causes go unchallenged? Can we draw lessons from nations
where food aid is said to have become ‘entrenched’ such as the US/Canada (e.g. Poppendieck).
> Do the different kinds of organisations mentioned above differ in their potential to offer new
solutions to food poverty (broadly defined as lack of ability to afford/access a healthy and
acceptable diet)? What is the impact on eating experiences of their varied approaches to acquiring,
preparing and distributing food?
> How might this question be approached theoretically and empirically?
Current thinking: I am interested in the power relations enabling/impeding SFR responses (such as
the influence of shifting city-level governance structures, access to space and the role of
supermarkets/food businesses in auditing/donating surplus). My post-development critique
questions both rights-based approaches (e.g. Englund 2006) and models of intervention that
problematize poor peoples’ diets/bodies/knowledge as targets for expert intervention (Coveney
2000). My ethnographic focus is the way food is handled, prepared and distributed by SFR
organisations, as well as the experiences of participants.
The image of the ignorant eater in discussions of poverty and obesity is challenged by attending
empirically to the anxiety and conflicting demands faced by mothers. The growing emphasis on
cooking skills provision by food aid organisations could be said to reinforce an individualizing model
of eating that relies upon women cooking in domestic settings. However, does the commensality
characterising The Real Junk Food Project’s waste food cafes invite a shift towards greater
communal eating, shared cooking and shared responsibility for ‘food choice’? What is ‘proper eating’
in a context of budgetary restriction, the chaos of everyday life and pressures to feed oneself and
others? Is ‘the family meal’ an idealised abstraction, a vital node of cohesion or a source of anxietyand how might it be reconfigured in the light of changing living arrangements and environmentalist
pressures to minimise waste and localize food systems?
To interrogate this ‘ethical’ domain, I seek to make use of methodologies that challenge the Kantian
assumptions of dominant approaches to ‘food insecurity’, often based on calculations of need and a
rationalising of nutrition. Feminist and phenomenological approaches to the body and eating have
sought to elucidate the sensory, affective, material and semiotic qualities of food and eating. An
unexplored pathway, I wonder, is via new findings in obesity and eating disorders research to the
question of how we approach surplus, waste and notions of ‘proper eating’ (e.g Warin 2010).
Reflexively drawing on my own past experiences with bulimia, I question at this pre-fieldwork stage
my own implication in a sensitive research domain, eating being an emotive and highly meaningful
locus of experiencing and expressing the self and relationship in different contexts.
Academic background: BA- Social Anthropology (University of Cambridge). MA- Sustainable
Development Advocacy (Bulmer Foundation/University of Worcester) with focus on
conceptualizing/communicating ‘sustainability’, and practical projects researching Adult Community
Learning provision, community orchards and ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’.
Some working history: poverty policy and campaign work (ATD Fourth World), ‘sustainable
behaviour change’ (University of Salford), coordination of Sustainable Consumption and Production
sub-group, Manchester: a Certain Future (stakeholder strategy for preventing/adapting to climate
change)
References
Coveney, J (2000) Food, Morals and Meaning: The pleasure and anxiety of eating (Routledge)
Englund. H (2010) Prisoners of Freedom: Human Rights and the African Poor, University of California
Press
Poppendieck, J (1986) Breadlines Knee-Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression,
Rutgers University Press
Warin, M. (2010) Abject Relations: Everyday Worlds of Anorexia, Rutgers University Press
Nese Ceren Tosun is a third year PhD student in the School of Theatre, Performance and Cultural
Policy Studies at Warwick. Her research entitled "Performing Home: London Foodscapes à la Turca"
explores the multiple scales of home-making performances of the Turkish, Kurdish and TurkishCypriot populations of London through their food-centered communicative exchanges. The
flexibility, pragmatism and the symbolism with which these communities buy, cook, consume and
frame food enrich our understanding of homes as imagined, claimed and enacted spheres,
wandering at the intersection of the domestic, communitarian, national and transnational spheres.
N.C.Tosun@warwick.ac.uk
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/postgraduate/students/current_students/nese_tosun