Co-creating multi-scalar generative change towards sustainable food systems: learning with sustainable food “communities of practice” in Zimbabwe and the UK

2026-07-22

This Fellowship aims to enhance and expand the career potential of the applicant over the course of 36 months of finely-tuned support and advanced skills training from the University of Sheffield, under the guidance of Professor Peter Jackson. The goal is to enable the researcher to move into a phase of professional stability and academic independence, to become fully established as leading researcher and innovator in the inter-disciplinary field of agri-food studies, as well as maturing, in the longer-term, to become an international thought-leader within Human Geography and Feminist Political Ecology. This Fellowship will position the researcher competitively in terms of securing a permanent faculty position at a leading University within the next four years, as well as supporting her to secure longer-term research funding within the next 3-7 years. Based at The Institute for Sustainable Food, the researcher will build upon previous project experiences in the Caribbean, the UK, Zimbabwe and Tanzania, to consolidate her skills and international expertise as a social scientist across the interconnected domains of agri-food systems, diverse economies, sustainability and local innovation processes. Key questions that guide this proposal are: “How does transformation towards more sustainable food systems take place, across different scales from the individual, to the community, to the regional, to the international?” “What are the socio-ecological, economic, political and institutional factors that enable the co-creation of change towards more sustainable food systems?” “How can researchers and policy-makers support the co-creation of change processes, across different scales, to allow more sustainable food systems to emerge?” In asking these questions, this research and career agenda engages with inter-disciplinary, cross-sectoral concerns and furthermore, aims to work in support of 11 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

United Kingdom (UK)

2026-02-15