Biography
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Geography and Environmental Science at the University of Southampton. My research investigates eating and dietary change from a sociological and geographic perspective. I am interested in how food practices are established, maintained and changed, with a particular focus on shifts in food consumption: for example, novel foods becoming established, foods travelling to new places, shifting public tastes, or changing notions of what ‘food’ actually is.
My current research explores how particular things become classified, culturally and practically, as 'food', and how this changes over space and time. My main project, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, aims to develop a theoretical account of how things become food. The project looks beyond individual consumers, exploring how diverse actors and social practices across the areas of production, supply and consumption ultimately shape what becomes culturally recognised as food.