Today you cannot do food research without meeting questions of climate change, green transition, sustainability and the need for regeneration, and a demand for analyzing what to do. Our food system suffers, and it is urgent to understand how we as researchers, gastronomes, activists, farmers etc can respond to the challenges and contribute – in collaboration - to the repair. However the concepts used to dig into the problems are many and often overlapping or ambiguous. This workshop explores how to analyze food-related problems in a time of climate change, especially the aim is to discuss which theoretical tools and concepts we can use to open up, unfold, better understand and repair the food system.

Hosted by Susanne Højlund, Dep. of Anthropology, Aarhus University

Held on Monday, December 4th, 2023

The food industry faces several challenges, such as a skilled labor shortage, new regulations, tax increases, and rising energy costs. Therefore, food producers must be very resilient, creative, and well-trained. It is essential that companies provide an attractive work environment to recruit new staff. During the webinar, the challenges faced by food producers in finding new staff or successors, and the measures to make work in food production more attractive to employees, will be discussed. Heiko will share his experience as an events manager of food events in the north of Germany and would like to ask the community for their experiences regarding the situation and best practices in their countries.

Hosted by Heiko Niehaus, UNISG alumnus and food event organizer

Held on Wednesday, February 14th, 2024

What does it mean to understand the interests at stake in the industrial production of meat? How to recognise subjects and values intertwined in the production and consumption of meat on an industrial scale? How can we identify the unsustainable aspects of industrial meat production? Is cultured meat a viable solution to address the issues caused by one of the most damaging industrial activities for the environment, human health and animal welfare? In this workshop, after an introduction by Flavio D'Abramo, the three convenors Mindi Schneider, Federica Timeto and Alice dal Gobbo will present their arguments from political ecology, agroecology and anti-speciesism on these issues, and propose insights into urgent but decades-old contradictions of globalized food systems.

Speakers:

Mindi Schneider, Institute at Brown for Environment and Society (IBES), USA

Federica Timeto, Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage, Ca' Foscari University, Italy

Alice Dal Gobbo, Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento, Italy

Flavio D'Abramo, University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo, Italy

Organized by Flavio D’Abramo and moderated by Gabriele Proglio from the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo

Held on Monday, April 8th, 2024