Who we are

About the Cluster

This research cluster encompasses work on food, nutrition and health in development at both the macro and micro levels. It includes work at the regional, national and household levels as well as engaging with the effects of global trends on national and household food security, and nutrition and health status.

Work on food has a strong emphasis on food security and food sovereignty at the regional, national and household level. Research on national food security focuses on policy choices between trade-based food security strategies i.e. food imports versus domestic food production and the socio-economic implications as well as the geo-politics of each strategy. It also looks at the more recent trend of achieving national food supplies via land acquisition overseas in land and water abundant host countries. Policy responses to global trends, such as the 2007/8 and 2011 global food price spikes and export embargoes, form an important part of the cluster’s work. This entails analysis of recent policy changes whereby countries are focusing on macro level food sovereignty strategies which move away from trade-based approaches to food security. The cluster has a strong regional focus on food security and sovereignty in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Acknowledging that national food security is necessary but not sufficient for individual or household food security, the cluster also includes work at the micro level, where food security issues overlap with research on nutrition and health. Food consumption patterns and their influence by global and national players, such as food retailers, and the effect of changing consumption patterns on nutritional status form one strand of this work.  A second strand is the link between food acquisition and economic activity, particularly how agricultural production and labour market participation affect the ability to access food.  A third strand of work considers how the intra-household distribution of food is determined.  This work looks at issues such as the bargaining power of women in the household, as well as at the difference in male and female consumption patterns.  This overall body of work has a strong regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

Finally, this research cluster is interested in the overall health and nutrition outcomes of particular food systems and policy approaches. This can be investigated at macro, sectoral and micro levels.  Thus, we may want to draw links between the impact on farmworker health and the nature of agricultural policy, e.g. a move to labour intensive, cash cropping, or towards certification, or ‘small holder’ promotion.  Or, at the household level, we can try to understand nutritional outcomes as the combination of various patterns of food access in the light of women’s reproductive burdens, government social policy and the prevailing economic system.

Cluster Members

Alessandra Mezzadri is a Lecturer in Development Studies at SOAS, University of London. One area of her work is labour and health in the context of urban India.

Ben Fine is a Professor in Economics at SOAS, University of London. His interests include the application of the systems of provision approach to food studies and the material cultures of food. Ben is a member of the Social Science Research Committee of the UK’s Food Standards Agency.

  • The World of Consumption, with Ellen Leopold, London: Routledge, 1993, pp. ix, 361.
  • Consumption in the Age of Affluence: The World of Food, with M. Heasman and J. Wright, London: Routledge, 1996, pp. x and 305.
  • The Political Economy of Diet, Health and Food Policy, London: Routledge, pp. 159, 1998.
  • The World of Consumption: The Material and Cultural Revisited, London: Routledge, second edition (but essentially new book), 2002, pp. 313.
  • “From Political Economy to Consumption”, in D. Miller (ed) Acknowledging Consumption, Routledge, 1996, pp. 127-63.
  • “Resolving the Diet Paradox”, Social Science Information, vol 32, no 4, Dec, 1993, pp. 669-87.
  • “What We Eat and Why: A Socioeconomic Approach to Standard Items in Food Consumption”, with M. Heasman and J. Wright, in A. Murcott (ed) (1998), The Nation’s Diet: The Social Science of Food Choice, Longmans, pp. 95-111.
  • “Towards a Political Economy of Food”, Review of International Political Economy, vol 1, no 3, 1994, pp. 519-45.
  • “Towards a Political Economy of Food: A Response to My Critics”, Review of International Political Economy, vol 1, no 3, 1994, pp. 579-86.
  • “Towards a Political Economy of Anorexia?”, Appetite, vol 24, no 3, 1995, pp. 231-42.
  • “From Sweetness to McDonald’s: How Do We Manufacture (the Meaning of) Foods?”, The Review of Social & Economic Studies, vol 29, no 2, pp. 247-71, 2007.
  • “Consumption Matters”, Ephemera, vol 13, no 2, 2013, pp. 217-48, http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/consumption-matters

Caroline Hambloch is a PhD Student in Economics at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on the emergence of one of the central tendencies in the current agro-food system, namely “governing through standards” instead of laws and regulation. These private types of regulation have emerged in the form of codes and standards, which may be created and managed by businesses, industry organizations and/or NGOs, governing the behavior of individuals and organizations participating in global value chains. This thesis studies the importance of private forms of governance in the global palm oil industry and its meanings and implications in the local context, by examining a comparative case study of the Philippines and Papua New Guinea. In particular, the research asks the question of why certain countries and/or regions upgrade their production processes in terms of adopting sustainability certifications, i.e. the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and others do not.

Deborah Johnston is a Reader in Development Economics at SOAS, University of London. She has worked on Sub-Saharan Africa for over 20 years, researching rural labour markets, poverty and welfare.

One theme of her work is the relationship between agriculture and welfare.  As such she is a member of the management committee for Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health (http://www.lcirah.ac.uk/) and has carried out a number of research and consultancy projects for: IFPRI 2014-15; WHO PMNCH 2013; DFID-funded 2012; UK Foresight 2009-2010.  Publications include: Food and Nutrition Bulletin 2013; Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2010).  Her work particularly looks at the gendered and class-based nature of access to food.

Fiorella Picchioni is a PhD student in CEDEP at SOAS, University of London. Her research focuses on the impact of food price shocks on food and nutrition security of vulnerable population in low-income countries. She is working on the development of an alternative food price index, the Minimum Calorie Expenditure Share, and using Mozambique Household Survey (IOF2008/09) to validate the methodology.

Jane Harrigan is a Professor of Economics at SOAS, University of London. She studies the political economy of food security in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as well as sub-Saharan Africa. She focuses on the macro dimensions of food security, namely how nation states acquire enough food to feed their populations. In addition to imports and domestic production she has also worked on the more recent phenomenon of land acquisition overseas, sometimes referred to as “land grab”, as a route to national food security, She has analysed the 2007/08 and 2011 global food price shock in depth and has put forward the argument that the resulting rising domestic food prices in MENA was one of the trigger factors in the Arab Spring. In her book “The Political Economy of Arab Food Sovereignty” she coins the new term “Macro food sovereignty” to express the idea that since the global food crisis nation states have become increasingly concerned with exerting power and control over their food supplies even when this involves violating the dictates of market forces such as the economics of comparative advantage.

  • The Political Economy of Arab Food Sovereignty, (2014), Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Agricultural Price Policy: Government and the Market, FAO Training Manual No. 31, (with R.Loader and C.Thirtle) (1992). Food and Agriculture Organization, Rome.
  • “An Economic Analysis of National Food Sovereignty Policies in the Middle East: The Case of Lebanon and Jordan” in Food Security in the Middle East, (2014), Babar, Z and Megrham, S. (eds.). Hurst.
  • “Food Security Policies and Starter Pack: a Challenge for Donors?” Part 4, Chpt.2 in Starter Packs: A Strategy to Fight Hunger in Developing and Transition Countries, (2005), S. Levy (ed.). CAB International, Wallingford.
  • “The Malawian Starter Pack: Fresh Start or False Start?”, Food Policy, January (2008).
  • “U-Turns and Full Circles: Two Decades of Agricultural Reform in Malawi 1981-2000”, World Development, vol. 31, no. 5, pp.847-863, (2003).
  • “Malawi: The Impact of Price Policy on Smallholder Agriculture, 1971-1988”, Development Policy Review, Vol.6, pp.415-433, (1988).
  • “Reforming Social Protection in the Near East Region: A Role for FAO”, FAO Near East Regional Office Cairo (2014).
  • “The Political Economy of Food Sovereignty in North Africa”, African Development Bank Briefing Paper (2012).

Lorena Lombardozzi is a PhD student in Economics at SOAS, University of London. Her thesis is on ‘Patterns of food consumption in Uzbekistan agrarian change: Is cotton in competition with quality Food? The case of Samarkand province’.  Her research will contribute to the “food for subsistence” versus “crop for cash” debate applied to the case study of Samarkand, one of the provinces of Uzbekistan. By studying the frictions over land use, inputs  and labour time between food crops and cotton production, this research will shed light on important and insightful dynamics of agrarian change in Central Asia and contribute to the studies on nutrition security and agricultural modernization on transitional capitalism.

Matteo Pinna Pintor is a PhD student in Economics at SOAS, University of London. His thesis is on ‘Health, risk reduction, and the microeconomics of capitalist development in China’.
His research looks at health status and health insurance as strategic commodities whose consumption likely affects production and reproduction parameters and decisions such as productivity, migration, labor supply within and across sectors and contracts, possibly with cross effects within the household.

Mehroosh Tak is a doctoral student with the Leverhulme Centre  for Integrated Research on Agriculture and Health (LCIRAH) and the Centre for Development, Environment and Policy (CEDEP). Her current work focuses on understanding the linkages between agriculture and nutrition and health. For her doctoral research Mehroosh is exploring how public investments in rural India can be made more nutrition-sensitive and the role of agriculture sector in improving nutrition outcomes. She holds an MSc in Development Economics from SOAS.

  • Groom, B. and Tak, M. (2015). ‘Welfare Analysis of Changing Food Prices: A Non-parametric Examination of Rice Policies in India’. Food Security, Volume 7, Issue 1 , pp 121-141
  • Kanter et al (2015). ‘A conceptual framework for understanding the impacts of agriculture and food system policies on nutrition and health’. Food Security,  August 2015, Volume 7, Issue 4, pp 767-777

Nigel Poole is a Reader in International Development at SOAS, University of London. Recent projects include research on development of the cassava value chain in Zambia, and the utilization of non-timber forest products by complex rural households in Burkina Faso, both with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and diverse local stakeholders. He is currently researching agrifood health and nutrition value chain linkages with the DFID-funded multi-institutional LANSA research programme in South Asia, covering Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan (http://www.lansasouthasia.org/), for which he is leading the Afghanistan Working Group. He is a member of the Board of Directors, CATIE (Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza/Centre for Tropical Agricultural Research and Teaching), Costa Rica, a member of the Programmes Policy Group, TREE AID, and is Chairman of a small charity supporting schooling in Delhi, India (Wye and Brook India Trust, registered charity number 288217).

Randa Alami is a Senior Teaching Fellow in Economics at SOAS, University of London. One theme of her work is on health policies in the MENA region.

  • “Healthcare in MENA: policies for inclusive development”, forthcoming (2015), in Christiansen, B and M. Erdogdu, Comparative Economic Perspectives on Europe and the MENA Region, IGI Global, Michigan.
  • Health, social policy and inclusive growth in MENA. Working Paper 188. Economics Dept, SOAS  April 2014

Sara Stevano is a Lecturer in Economics at UWE Bristol and formerly Postdoctoral Fellow in Economics at SOAS University of London. Her research interests include the socio-economic study of food consumption and food/agricultural systems. She completed a PhD on ‘Women’s work, food and household dynamics in northern Mozambique’, as part of which she looked at the underlying determinants of food consumption patterns and food insecurity in a northern Mozambican province. She recently worked on a review looking at time use as a mediating factor between agriculture and nutrition in low- and middle-income countries – a brief overview of the study can be found on this IFPRI blog and the full report is accessible here https://www.ifpri.org/publication/agriculture-gendered-time-use-and-nutritional-outcomes-systematic-review. She is currently working on a project that looks at food consumption among middle class consumers in urban Ghana.

Sophie Van Huellen is a Lecturer in Economics at SOAS, University of London. Her main interests include food prices and issues around food security and food sovereignty. In particular she works on the financialisation of food commodity markets, speculative influences on gain prices, supply chain studies and the financial side of food industries. Sophie further co-authored a book chapter with Machiko Nissanke that looks at commodity dependency in South Asia, including food.

  • Van Huellen, S. (2018) ‘How financial investment distorts food prices: Evidence from US grain markets’. Agricultural Economics.
  • Nissanke, M. and van Huellen, S. (2014) ‘Commodities Super-cycle: Implications for South Asia.” In Regional Integration in South Asia: Trends, Challenges and Prospects’. Regional Integration in South Asia: Trends, Challenges and Prospects. London: The Commonwealth, pp 281-303.