Our technology platforms: Genomics
August 1, 2022
Over the next few weeks we will be featuring stories about our different technology platforms, their work and research, and the facilities available to researchers. These are also featured in our 2021 Annual Report. First up, we look at the genomics facility: Deep Seq. The Future Food Beacon invested in numerous items of equipment to increase …
Adaptation and resilience in the Yucatan: an ode to farmers – by Karla G. Hernandez-Aguilar
April 23, 2021
Karla G. Hernandez-Aguilar is a PhD student on the Palaeobenchmarking Resilient Agricultural Systems (PalaeoRAS) project I described the challenges of conducting fieldwork in the middle of a pandemic in my blog on 16 April 2021 so now I would like to take this opportunity to reflect upon the qualities of adaptation and resilience that I observed on a daily basis …
Fieldwork in the Yucatan during the Covid-19 pandemic – An interview with Karla G. Hernandez-Aguilar
April 16, 2021
Karla G. Hernandez-Aguilar is a PhD candidate on the Palaeobenchmarking Resilient Agricultural Systems (PalaeoRAS) project. Photograph above: colour diversity in a maize variety called Gallito (little rooster) harvested in the same milpa plot in Xoy community in Southern Yucatan – by Karla G. Hernandez-Aguilar When was your first research trip to the Yucatan and how did it go? My first …
From China to the UK during the pandemic – An interview with Dr Yiqun Gao
January 8, 2021
Dr Yiqun Gao is based at the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences. He is a Newton International Fellow at The Future Food Beacon and we are grateful to him for travelling to the UK to take up his Fellowship on 1st November 2020, right in the middle of the UK’s ongoing Covid-19 pandemic! His brave decision …
Changing commensality during the crisis: the Nottingham Social Eating Network and Covid-19
June 10, 2020
This post is written by Marsha Smith. The Nottingham Social Eating Network and its community food partners in the city mobilised to meet the rising demand for food aid support during the early stages of lockdown. In this post, I reflect on how the values of ‘social eating’ initiatives are being translated into emergent, localised …
The Perfect Storm: Environmentally and Socially Unsustainable Seafood Supply Chains
May 19, 2020
This post is written by Lee Matthews, Lucy McCarthy and Anne Touboulic. Seafood supply chains sustain three billion people nutritionally and also provide 10% of the world’s population with employment, the vast majority of whom are small-scale fisher-people. Seafood provides access to safe protein for many of the world’s most economically marginalised people but these …
Elizabeth David on food and belonging: Keeping house during a lockdown
May 5, 2020
This post is written by Dr Richard Vytniorgu, Impact Research Fellow in the School of Cultures, Languages, and Area Studies. The Challenge of Covid-19 For those of us who can, working from home has become the new normal, squeezing our entire lives into the four walls we call home. Inviting friends and family over for socialising …
Genomic sequencing and Covid-19
April 30, 2020
Deep Seq, the University of Nottingham’s state of the art high-throughput genomics facility, is currently part of the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, mapping the spread of coronavirus. We spoke to Prof Matt Loose and Dr Christopher Moore, about the work, the equipment they use, and how they are adjusting to this new challenge. Tell us …
Global trading: the good, the bad and the essential
April 27, 2020
This post is written by Lucy McCarthy (QUB), Anne Touboulic (University of Nottingham), and Lee Matthews (University of Nottingham). In our last post, we began our journey considering food supply chains in times of pandemic and we touched upon their history. Here, we further consider some of the flaws in our globalised food systems and …
Global food supply chains in times of pandemic
April 7, 2020
This post is written by Anne Touboulic, Lee Matthews, and Lucy McCarthy The public health crisis unfolding before us is unprecedented, unimaginable and catastrophic. It will profoundly impact our values and lifestyles as it exposes the implications of national austerity measures on public services and the precariousness of our globalised production and consumption systems. Food supply chains …
