by | September 1, 2020 · 9:10 am
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What’s Cooking, September 2020

What’s Cooking is an update on all things related to CHEFS: the Culture, Health, Environment, Food and Society research cluster at Sheffield Hallam University. What’s been cooking since our last edition?

After a bit of a hiatus, our research blog is back, thanks to Cecile Morris. Check out Energy drinks, caffeine and young adults, which reports on recently published research and suggests that there’s more at play than taste, healthiness perception and energy boosting properties when it comes to how young people use these drinks.

New for autumn 2020: an experiment in online community! CHEFS will be holding monthly research roundtables on Zoom. These meetings are an informal chance to check in, share updates, trade suggestions, ask questions and bounce ideas around. No prep needed—just a chance to meet up and talk CHEFS for an hour. We’ll see how the first three go, and take it from there.

I’ll be sending outlook meeting invites via the CHEFS JISC list. Not joined the JISC list yet? See information on the very bottom of each CHEFS webpage.

Below, we have updates on recent CHEFS activities, including:

  • a highly circulated response to the government’s recent obesity strategy (Lucie Nield and Jenny Paxman);
  • research on the impact of open kitchens on the experience of chefs (David Graham, Alisha Ali and Kayhan Tajeddini), the role of wine in Chinese gifting practices (Jennifer Smith Maguire and John Dunning), and storytelling and regional wineries (Jennifer Smith Maguire/CHEFS);
  • funded PhD opportunity, to compare Australian and UK community engagement in alcohol licensing processes (Jo Reynolds);
  • a list of useful resources (relevant to food and drink teaching and research in the context of coronavirus and/or Brexit), calls for papers and the usual call for content for the November 2020 edition of What’s Cooking.

Happy reading!

Cheers, Jen

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Recent CHEFS Activities

Lucie Nield and Jenny Paxman, Registered Nutritionists from the Food & Nutrition subject group, have responded to the Government’s obesity strategy and Public Health England’s ‘Better Health’ campaign. Their article in The Conversation has been very widely circulated, with reports appearing in numerous sources including the Independent, Yahoo News, and Fresh Produce Journal. Whilst Lucie and Jenny are happy that the government has started to address obesity issues more widely and appreciate that something needs to be done, there are many criticisms of the current proposals, some of which were summarised in the article.

David Graham, Alisha Ali and Kayhan Tajeddini’s journal article, ‘Open kitchens: Customers’ influence on chefs’ working practices’ has been published in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management. The paper investigates the transformation of chefs’ experience through the reorientation of their work environment from closed to open kitchens which now necessitate customer engagement. We build on the research gap, by investigating chefs’ perceptions of this transition, through a Goffmanian lens to theorise the impact of customer interactions. Chefs spoke passionately about how their social reality and shared perceptions of kitchen work are shifting due to exposure to customers. Fundamental, positive changes are occurring for chefs’ working practices and the skills required in meeting the demands of the experience economy. Theoretically, our novel findings offer a fresh perspective of the modern chef and advance the conversation beyond the negative connotations portrayed of kitchen life.

You can download the full paper using this link: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1bZFA59AUIYsdx

Jennifer Smith Maguire and John Dunning presented ‘Wine, Status and Rituals of Gifting in a Chinese Context.’ The presentation reported preliminary findings from their research on the role of wine in Chinese gifting practices. The presentation was part of an online ‘Wine and the Gift’ symposium, with contributors to a forthcoming ‘Wine and the Gift’ edited collection from Routledge, edited by Dr Peter Howland. Presentations from the symposium are available on YouTube: Southern Roundtable (https://youtu.be/ydXzR4NMhrU) and Northern Roundtable (https://youtu.be/19bLTo9j9hk). Jen and John’s paper is in the Northern Roundtable, start approx. 2.43.50.

Jennifer Smith Maguire led a successful bid for Pracademia seedcorn funding for a project, ‘Fostering the development of regional wineries through a focus on storytelling.’ The project aims to build links between CHEFS and small-scale wineries of the Midlands/North region of the UK wine industry. Storytelling is a crucial market device for small-scale wineries (and food/drink SMEs more generally); while the Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally disrupted existing market relations, the pivot to digital platforms and virtual tastings and tours also suggests potential for innovation and business development. The seedcorn funding will enable CHEFS to hire a student researcher to assist with an analysis of regional wineries’ current online storytelling practices and marketing communication development needs. The research is intended to provide a starting point for a 2021 Sheffield Innovation Programme-funded event aimed at regional wineries: an opportunity to showcase CHEFS expertise. More details to come, including an invitation to the wider CHEFS community to get involved.

Joanna Reynolds has been successful in developing a funded joint PhD project with colleagues at La Trobe University, which is currently open for applications. Please share widely!

PhD opportunity: comparing community engagement in alcohol licensing processes in Australia and the UK

There’s an exciting PhD studentship available based at La Trobe University in Melbourne, in collaboration with Sheffield Hallam University, to start in 2021. The focus is on community engagement in alcohol licensing, involving research in both Australia and the UK, and would be suitable for someone with a social science, social policy or public health background. The studentship is open to Australia and NZ citizens, and permanent residents in Australia, and the deadline for applications is 31st October 2020. Please see the advert for more information, and share with colleagues and networks. Feel free to get in contact with Dr. Joanna Reynolds (joanna.reynolds@shu.ac.uk) to discuss further.

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Resources/call for papers/conference announcements

Various new resources relevant to CHEFS in the current (CV19/Brexit) moment

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Call for book chapter abstracts for The Routledge Handbook of Wine Tourism (deadline 25 September).

The present Handbook is therefore conceptualized to provide essential understanding, segmentation, and profiling of markets; consumer behavior; marketing implications, and technological interface to the wine tourism industry. It will also offer recommendations for wine tourism business operators, customers, and destinations to enable them to create, manage, and market wine tourism experiences successfully. This Handbook will also offer theoretical and practical evidence to address the challenges and seize the opportunities in the arena of wine tourism. Therefore, the proposed Handbook aims to provide the updated comprehensive volume to give conceptual, theoretical, and applied advancements concerning wine tourism. The Handbook will not merely be a collection of papers or case studies. Each chapter will seek to contribute to the conceptual understanding of one or more aspects of the topic, supported by a range of suitable examples from global wine tourism contexts.

I welcome contributions from researchers, scholars, and practitioners who are working in different verticals of wine tourism.

Researchers and practitioners who wish to contribute a chapter, are requested to send a proposal / brief abstract in about 400 words highlighting the theme, aim, and research objectives of the chapter. Prospective contributors are also requested to send a brief author’s biography of no more than 100 words to the editor at saurabh5sk@yahoo.com by September 25, 2020.

Complete details and author guidelines will be sent to the contributors on acceptance of the chapter proposal.

With Regards,

Dr. Saurabh Kumar Dixit
Associate Professor and Head,
Department of Tourism & Hotel Management,
North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong – 793022 (INDIA)
Tel: +919436565964 (M), +917005690748 (M)
Email: saurabh5sk@yahoo.com, saurabhdixit@nehu.ac.in

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Call for content for the next edition of What’s Cooking

The next edition of What’s Cooking will be November 2020. Please send content (research updates, calls for expression of interest, relevant calls for papers/conference/event announcements) to j.smith1@shu.ac.uk by Thursday 29 October.

Want to stay updated? Follow us on Twitter (@SHU_CHEFS), subscribe to the blog and/or join our Jisc email list: see information on the very bottom of each CHEFS webpage.

 

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