Category Archives: hospitality

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?

Check out our most recent blog from Jenny Paxman, which reviews the socio-cultural dimensions of the pandemic, highlights emergent inequalities, challenges and opportunities for change, and considers how these impact on food security, appetite, nutrition, and food behaviours. It’s a great introduction to SHARe: Sheffield Hallam Appetite Research, a new sub-cluster of CHEFS.

The blog site has recently had a major spring cleaning and update. Check out our:

• New homepage, which highlights our three main clusters of work within the CHEFS, SHARe and SWEFS (Surplus Waste and Excess Food in Society) clusters;
• New events page, with information on our monthly research roundtables, September’s Digital Innovation and Wine event (see below!), SHU Brew, and past events;
• New research page, with an A to Z of highlights of recent member outputs. Have you got something to contribute? Please let Jen (smith1@shu.ac.uk) know—one entry maximum per member, plus a fun challenge to see who can complete the missing letters (A-G, O-P complete; we need H-N and Q-Z!);
• Updated members page reflecting some of our new additions. Not on there and would like to be? Please let Jen know (smith1@shu.ac.uk).

Below, we have:

• updates on recent CHEFS members’ activities (including consumer perceptions of post-covid hospitality, a mentoring scheme for food studies students, a collaborative workshop on digital storytelling and wine, research on responses to breastfeeding in public (including a call for survey participants), and involvement in two bids to the Transforming UK Food Systems Call);
• resources/calls for papers/conference announcements (including 15^th May online event ‘Feeding Sheffield Sustainably’, upcoming May events/deadlines, a new report from the Food and Drink Federation, and two upcoming job opportunities at School of Wine & Spirits Business of Burgundy School of Business);
• the usual call for contributions and content for the July 2021 edition of What’s Cooking.

Finally: a reminder of our 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 12 May, 3-4pm
• Wednesday 16 June, 4-5pm
• Wednesday 15 September, 3-4pm (after a summer hiatus!)

Meeting invites (with Zoom link and meeting password) are sent out via the CHEFS JISC list (September invite will be circulated shortly).
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

James Ellerby contributed to Come Back Strong: Hospitality Insight Report, an industry report developed in collaboration with Airship, on consumer attitudes and perceptions in relation to returning to hospitality venues post-covid. James, along with dan Brookman, CEO of Airship also presented the findings via an Institute of Hospitality webinar on 27 April which further laid out the simple steps that businesses of all sizes can take to implement a ‘value exchange’ and introduce a simple loyalty model to generate immediate revenue and drive footfall as the sector reopens.

Jenny Paxman has been working with the SHU Press Office to support ‘Flourish in Food’ a mentoring scheme set up by Hallam alumni Cameron Rigg. The scheme includes 150 food industry mentors paired with Food students all over the country (including Hallam students and alumni mentors). The scheme aims to help students gain general food industry advice, and offer application and interview support, motivation and guidance, and networking opportunities within the food industry. Further details available on Flourish in Food’s website, or email flourishinfoodmentoring@gmail.com.

John Dunning, Jennifer Smith Maguire and Valentina Kirova (at Excelia) will be hosting an online research colloquium on 13^th September, on the topic of ‘digital innovation and wine’. Relevant perspectives on the workshop theme of ‘digital innovation and wine’ may include but are not limited to:

• Marketing and storytelling
• Destination branding
• Hospitality and tourism management
• Experience economy
• Cultural production and consumption
• Sensory analysis
• Provenance, authenticity and heritage
• Practitioner and industry perspectives

Colleagues with no prior research engagement with wine as an empirical field of study are very welcome to take part. Wine is a fertile area of research, providing ample opportunity for inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural comparative work. Full details are available on the CHEFS Events page. A formal invitation to register to participate will be circulated in mid-May.

Cecile Morris and MSc Nutrition with Public Health Management student Amy Furness are carrying out research on emotional responses to breastfeeding in public. The first phase of the research is a survey, which will act as a gateway to recruit interview participants for a second phase of the project. The survey is accessible here. Please share widely; the survey runs until 31 May. Amy’s research is part of a wider project on attitudes towards breastfeeding in public. The health benefits of breastfeeding are well documented for mothers and babies alike, however, breastfeeding rates remain low in the UK. Negative attitudes towards breastfeeding in public are an important contributing factor in breastfeeding discontinuation. Well publicised examples of breastfeeding mothers being asked to cover up have exacerbated this. We know that some segments of the population are more likely to support / oppose breastfeeding in public and attempts to identify articulated reasons for being unsupportive of breastfeeding in public have provided some valuable background information. However, readers’ comments on articles reporting breastfeeding in public incidents provide evidence of a charged emotional context. Despite this, emotional responses from members of the public to breastfeeding in public have not been rigorously investigated and reported. If you have any questions about the research, please get in touch with Cecile.

CHEFS members have been involved with two recent first stage bids to the second UKRI Transforming UK Food Systems Call. James Ellerby, Alisha Ali and Jenny Paxman were involved in a bid led by University of Sheffield on ‘Creating a micro-urban food system for catalysing capabilities to grow, prepare and share healthy sustainable food.’ Jennifer Smith Maguire was co-applicant on ‘Pulses for health and the environment’, a bid led by Professor Martin Howarth of the National Centre of Excellence for Food Engineering along with SHU colleagues Bipro Dubey and Robert Bradshaw.

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Resources/call for papers/conference announcements

Feeding Sheffield Sustainably, Saturday 15 May, 1-4 pm. Register here.
The Festival of Debate’s Feeding Sheffield Sustainably is a free, half-day conference that will happen virtually on Saturday 15th May, featuring talks from speakers working across Sheffield’s food system. The key purpose of the event is to bring civil society organisations who work in local food production, food waste and food poverty initiatives together to discuss how their work can complement and reinvigorate our approach to food in Sheffield. Speakers include: Prof Duncan Cameron (University of Sheffield, Institute for Sustainable Food); Dr Alexandra Sexton (University of Sheffield, Institute for Sustainable Food); Debbie Mathews (Manor & Castle Development Trust & S2 Food Bank); Gareth Roberts (Sheffield Food Partnership & Regather); Rene Meijer (Food Works); Sam Evans (S6 Food Bank); Martin Yarnit (Food Hubs); Sue Pearson (Heeley City Farm); Fran Halsall (Regather).

SHEFF-Yield webinar, Thursday 27 May, 6pm. Register here.
This is the sixth webinar from the SHEFF-Yield series that aims to teach Sheffield community how and why to grow your own food at home. Speaker Anton Rosenfeld from Garden Organic will give a talk on ‘Practical Organic Growing: Beyond not using chemicals.’

Sheffield Alcohol Research Group Early Career Alcohol Research Symposium, 6-7 July 2021 (online). Deadline for abstracts: 24 May.
This two day online symposium is aimed at early career researchers (ECRs), working in the field of alcohol from both public health and social perspectives. The symposium is designed to give ECRs a new platform to discuss and present their research, in an environment that facilitates research dissemination, mentoring, and networking. Abstract submission and registration are now open. If you wish to submit an abstract, please fill in this form no later than the 24 May 2021. For more details and a registration link, please see attached or visit the website. 

BSA Alcohol Studies Group Virtual Workshop, Wednesday 15th September 2021, ‘Thinking critically about lived experience of alcohol in social science research and teaching’. Deadline for abstracts: 30 May.
Our next study group event will be structured around the broad theme of ‘lived experience’ of alcohol, in social science research and teaching. We aim for this to be a supportive event for open reflection and discussion. We welcome 20 minute presentations in the traditional PowerPoint type format but would consider presentations in other formats which can be delivered online. The event is open to all. The event is free for BSA members. There will be a £10 minimum charge for non-members, though some free places may be available for non-members on request. Please submit your abstract of no more than 200 words by 30th May 2021 to the convenors claire.markham@ntu.ac.uk or kat.jackson@newcastle.ac.uk, or please get in touch if you have any questions or would like more information.

Gastronomy Summit 2022, Oxford Cultural Collective/Ulster University, 11-13 April 2022. Deadline for abstracts: 1 August.
The overarching theme of Gastronomy Summit 2022 is: Developing food and drink destinations in ways that benefit local communities. The Summit’s tracks (themes), which should be the focus of submitted abstracts, papers and posters are:

• Food, drink and hospitality as catalysts for economic, cultural and social regeneration in urban or rural locations
• Food, drink and hospitality as catalysts for equality and social cohesion
• Food, drink and regenerative tourism
• Food, drink and identity
• Food, drink and hospitality as catalysts for sustainable development
• Education in culinary arts and gastronomy (e.g. cultural contextualization, links to destination development)

Submissions may relate to conceptual or empirical research and should normally report on completed studies in one or more of the Summit’s tracks (noted above). Abstracts and papers reporting on substantially developed work in progress will also be considered. You may wish to consider the submission of a poster to report on work in progress. You are encouraged to include commentary on the possible application and impact of your research. The research committee encourages submissions from established researchers, as well as those in the early stages of their academic careers, including doctoral students. Deadlines: submission of paper abstracts (300 words) due 1 August, with full papers if accepted due 1 November; submission of poster proposals due 1 November. Full details available online in the Call for Submissions and Posters.

Food and Drink Federation/Santander UK food and drink export report: Food and Drink Industry Report 2021
The report looks at the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on UK food and drink exports in 2020, and finds that exports fell by 9.7% in 2020 compared to the previous year, totalling £21.3bn, despite sporadic re-openings of the hospitality and travel sectors. The report includes a focus on exports to four growth markets with insights from specialists in Santander’s export team: the United States, and key members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The report also looks at the export performance of producers in the UK’s nations and regions, with insights provided by FDF Scotland and FDF Cymru. Report is free to download.

Job opportunities: Burgundy School of Business
The School of Wine & Spirits Business of Burgundy School of Business, in Dijon, France, is looking for initial expressions of interest, in advance of recruiting staff from September 2021. Expressions of interest (and/or requests for further details about the posts can be had from either Nikos Georgantzis nikolaos.georgantzis@bsb-education.com or Steve Charters steve.charters@bsb-education.com. There are two posts available:

• Research-Teacher in Wine and Spirits Business. This is a senior position for an academic from one of the business disciplines to carry out research and to teach. We are a small but dynamic, multicultural research team who work very cooperatively, and this would suit someone who enjoys working with others. The teaching load is to be determined, depending on overall responsibilities, but will be designed to suit an active researcher. A background in any discipline will be welcomed, but applications from those with experience of general Management, Strategy, Hospitality or Distribution will especially welcome, as will those from academics who have done work specifically in the field of spirits.  Experience in the wine and spirits is not essential, but a willingness to focus on the field is.
• Research Assistant/Post-Doctoral Researcher. There is a post for a Research Assistant. This is designed either for a PhD student who is looking for some employment in the field whilst they complete their thesis, or for a Post-Doc.  The responsibilities will include assisting our researchers on their projects (especially one funded by the European Union) and a level of teaching, to be determined. It is expected that the successful applicant will have some experience in the field of wine or spirits (or possible more broadly food) and be willing to concentrate on this area in their work.  As we are a School of Business and anticipate that the applicants will submit/have a doctorate in one of these, but we would be willing to consider other disciplines if they were relevant to our focus.

For both positions good written and spoken English is essential (most of our courses are taught in English).  French is helpful but not essential, and support and teaching will be available to any non-French speaking person who is appointed.  A willingness to focus on wine and/or spirits is also a given!

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Call for content for the next edition of What’s Cooking
The next edition of What’s Cooking will be July 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 24 June.

CHEFS blog
Interested in writing a blog? These are usually 800-1200 words and written for a general audience in an informal style. Blogs can revisit work you’ve already done (e.g., highlighting a recent output/publication); discuss research or research-related activities (teaching, public engagement, etc.) that you are working on; offer your informed take on contemporary food/drink issues or policy; provide a profile on your research. If you’d like to contribute a piece, please get in touch with Jen (j.smith1@shu.ac.uk).

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.