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?
Below, we have:
- updates on recent CHEFS activities (including developments in working with the Wine and Spirit Education Trust; a research output on Chinese wine gifting; new research on lifestyle interventions for women with infertility, and community engagement in alcohol licensing; the 2022 Nutrition Society conference; and a Horizon 2020 bid on food waste and vulnerable consumers);
- resources/calls for papers/conference announcements (including a fully funded PhD on food insecurity; online events on drug history and harmful drinking; an archival resource of cookbooks), and the usual call for content for the May 2021 edition of What’s Cooking.
Finally: a reminder of the upcoming monthly virtual research roundtables: 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:
- Wednesday 17 March, 4-5pm
- Wednesday 14 April, 2-3pm
- Wednesday 12 May, 3-4pm
- Wednesday 16 June, 4-5pm
Meeting invites (with Zoom link and meeting password) have been sent out via the CHEFS JISC list. Not joined the JISC list yet? See information on the very bottom of each CHEFS webpage. In the meantime, please email me directly (j.smith1@shu.ac.uk) if you’d like me to forward a meeting invite.
Happy reading!
Cheers, Jen
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Recent CHEFS Activities
John Dunning is leading an application for the Department of Service Sector Management of Sheffield Hallam University to become a Wine and Spirit Education Trust (WSET) Approved Programme Provider (APP). This will mean that we will be able to run a range of WSET wine courses, which will provide great opportunities to widen wine study and research for our students, CHEFS members, DSSM colleagues and other interested parties. Further updates to come as this exciting development progresses. For more information or general enquiries, please contact Dr John Dunning, DipWSET, FWS: J.Dunning@shu.ac.uk
Jennifer Smith Maguire and John Dunning completed the first output from their research on Chinese wine gifting practices, which will appear as a chapter in the forthcoming Routledge collection, Wine and The Gift: From Production to Consumption. Wine is increasingly popular in China, but familiarity with and knowledge of wine remain relatively low. Gifting plays an integral role in the expression of Chinese cultural values, as a process through which respect is demonstrated and social ties and mutual obligations are fostered. However, how does that process unfold when knowledge of the intended honorific meaning of the gift cannot be taken for granted? Semi-standardized interviews, complemented by photo elicitation activities, were conducted with a small sample of Chinese consumers of varying ages and levels of wine involvement. The analysis highlights the contingent and laborious accomplishment of gifting: a well-chosen gift involves a series of adjustments made by the gift-giver, to ensure the gift is calibrated to reflect the giver-recipient relationship, and aligned to the recipient’s capacity to appreciate the gift. In adopting a sociological perspective on gifting as consumption, the chapter contributes novel qualitative insights to existing knowledge of wine-related Chinese consumer behaviour.
Lucie Nield is working with the Fit 4 Baby Research Group based in Teesside and coordinated by Tees Valley Sport. The aim of the research is to develop a co-designed lifestyle intervention for women with infertility. The work encompasses a systematic review, focus groups and interviews with services users and specialists in the field of fertility to look at the existing evidence base and what an ideal intervention would look like. She is involved in the systematic review and on the steering group. A co-designed intervention will then be developed, piloted and evaluated with further review undertaken. A second ‘tweaked’ intervention will then be piloted. The project is funded by Sport England and the systematic review should be complete by early Spring.
Joanna Reynolds has a new PhD student, Filip Djordjevic, starting in March as part of the La Trobe University – Sheffield Hallam University collaboration. Based primarily at La Trobe in Melbourne, but with co-supervision from Jo Reynolds and Paul Hickman (SHU, Department of Psychology, Sociology & Politics), Filip will be conducting research into processes and impacts of community engagement in alcohol licensing decisions in Australia and the UK. He will be exploring several case studies in each country, with particular attention on understanding impacts of engagement for disadvantaged groups. If you would like to know more, or know of any examples of communities influencing alcohol licensing, please contact Jo Reynolds: joanna.reynolds@shu.ac.uk
Jenny Paxman has been involved in a successful bid to host the 2022 annual Nutrition Society Summer Meeting in Sheffield (12-15 July, 2022). The competitive bid to host 400 delegates in the city across the four day conference was put together by Marketing Sheffield’s Conference Team, Sheffield Hallam University (SHU) and the University of Sheffield (UoS). The team in Sheffield brings together local expertise around the theme of food and nutrition and internationally renowned speakers with a view to exploring the pathway to a sustainable food future, looking at areas such as building ethical food systems, eroding nutritional inequalities and sustaining an ageing population. From Sheffield Hallam the conference team is led by Jenny Paxman, Subject Group Leader for Food and Nutrition at SHU, with support from Lucie Nield joined by colleagues from the University of Sheffield, Dr Liz Williams from The Human Nutrition Unit and Dr Sam Caton from The Institute for Sustainable Food.
Dianne Dean has been involved in a Horizon 2020 project bid: ‘A Systemic Approach to Reducing Waste and Producing Food with Improved Accessibility, Welfare, Affordability, and Sustainability that is Transformational and Engaging’ (AWAYSTE). Di, along with Pallavi Singh, Michael Benson and John Kirkby, are responsible for work package 1, which aims to build a deeper understanding of vulnerable consumer’s relationship with food. The research will focus on providing insight into how vulnerable consumers purchase food, what type of food they consume, what is the choice criteria, how they manage their food waste, if/how they recycle and understand their acceptance of novel food and sustainable packaging. This information will help guide other work packages in the project to co-create sustainable food products using new technologies that has the vulnerable consumer in mind.
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Resources/call for papers/conference announcements
Funded PhD studentship on food insecurity; deadline 12th March
Opportunity to apply for a fully funded ESRC CASE PhD studentship, to a suitably qualified candidate, working in the field of food insecurity. Based at the University of Liverpool, working in collaboration with a local social enterprise, Can Cook, we aim to critically evaluate food charity, taking into account diet, food choice, and psychological wellbeing and will look at the optimum process to support food security at the scale of community and household. Further particulars about the studentship can be obtained from either Alan Southern or Charlotte Hardman at the University of Liverpool. Details of how to apply can be found on the University of Liverpool web pages here. The deadline for applications is March 12th.
Zoom roundtable on drug history, 9th March
The Alcohol and Drug Historical Society are hosting a round table on ‘The Past, Present, and Future of Drug History’. The event is free and open to the public. Tuesday, March 9, 2021, 5-7PM (Eastern Standard Time—note the North American time zone!). Registration is required: register here. Participants:
- Paul Gootenberg, Stony Brook University, “The Globalization of Drug History, 1990-2020”
- Miriam Kingsberg Kadia, University of Colorado Boulder, “The Historiography of Drugs in East Asia”
- Emily Dufton, George Washington University, “Still Searching for the Holy Grail: The Long History of Medication Assisted Treatment in the US”
- Lucas Richert, University of Wisconsin, Madison, “The Intersection of Drug History and Pharmacy History”
DARC research seminar on harmful drinking, 17th March
Drug and Alcohol Research Centre seminar by James Morris on ‘Why harmful drinkers reject change: coping and cognition in maintaining heavy drinking’ on 17th March. Details and registration here.
Digital cookbook archive
The Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more. It’s Cookbooks and Home Economics Collection has over 10,000 vintage recipe books available for free in digital form (a useful overview introducing the collection is here).
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Call for content for the next edition of What’s Cooking
The next edition of What’s Cooking will be May 2021. 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 April.
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.