SOAS Summer School Food and Nutrition in Development
The Summer School Food and Nutrition in Development 2017 has taken place over three weeks in August at SOAS. It has been jointly co convened by Deborah Johnston, Fiorella Picchioni and Lorena Lombardozzi, and involved various academics from the department of Economics and the Food Studies Centre. It has offered a unique programme built on the SOAS Economics Department research and teaching expertise in the political economy of food and nutrition. The participants have been introduced to multidisciplinary perspectives on food and nutrition, and learnt from a wide range of country case studies presented by researchers conducting first-hand and innovative research in these fields. It covered key areas such as: measurements of food security; responses to hunger; the role of technology in food and nutrition; gender and food security; the food price crisis. In addition to lectures and tutorials students have also taken part in exciting activities in and outside the classroom such as a day trip to the Boltons Park Farm dairy unit, playing the role-game Kupanda, and listening to podcast seminars.
Livestock Day:
The Livestock Day was jointly organised with IFSTAL at RVC Hawkshead campus. The first part of the day was dedicated to lectures and discussion on the role of Animal Source Foods (ASFs) in food security, nutrition and health, followed by presentations on poultry and pigs production systems and animal welfare. In the afternoon students had the opportunity to attend a guided visit to Boltons Park Farm dairy unit and have a real experience of how commercial (dairy) in the UK farms are run.
Kupanda:
Kupanda is a role-game on seasonality, livelihoods and nutrition. Kupanda is a peasant farming game where players take on the role of farming households. Players have to juggle different resources available to them each month to ensure that they survive the season and at the same time earn enough to provide for the household’s requirements for the following season. Kupanda helps players understand the different pressures that drive decision making amongst some poor rural communities and how seasonal and stochastic events may affect people’s livelihoods, food and nutrition security and ultimately, their survival.
Podcast Seminar:
Prof. Jane Dixon and Prof. Catherine Banwell (Australian National University) delivered a podcast seminar with title “Quest for modernity: Ethnographic Studies in Thailand’s Fresh/Wet Markets & Supermarkets” on the Thai experience of the nutrition transition and supermarketisation of society.
If you want to be part of future summer school, please visit the SOAS Summer School Website.