About the project
This project aims to develop the lens of resilient industrial socio-metabolic relations – a conceptual framework that moves beyond functional understandings of inputs and outputs, to integrate lived experiences of benefits and harms – through an empirical focus on the nutri- and pharma- ceutical components of the UK chicken meat industry.
Food-systems thinking presents decision-makers, policymakers and food-leaders with barriers to understanding ethical relations at play in social and environmental resilience. This PhD studentship will support the development of the lens of socio-metabolic relations – a conceptual framework that moves beyond functional understandings of inputs and outputs, to integrate human and animal lived experiences of benefits and harms in food systems. The empirical focus is on the nutri- and pharma- ceutical components of the UK chicken meat industry.
It contributes to TRI SoMe Chicken, a major project which aims to strengthen the resilience of the chicken meat industry, which is currently meeting 50% of UK meat demand. Chicken is vulnerable to disruptions from international trading conditions, extreme weather and potential civil unrest. Given the central place of chicken in the nation’s diet, alongside vulnerabilities and public concern around chicken-welfare and chicken-waste polluting UK rivers, it is timely to consider these issues.
The PhD focuses on understanding the supply and use, and who or what is harmed and benefitted, from the nutriceuticals and pharmaceuticals widely used in the production and manufacturing of chicken in the UK and abroad, and then sold to UK consumers.
TRI SoMe Chicken is an interdisciplinary UKRI/BBSRC/DEFRA-funded project, with co-investigators drawn from the academic institutions of Gloucestershire, City, Bristol as well as Southampton, along with industry collaborators The Applied Group and FAI. The larger project will forge a novel policy instrument of ethical principles for socio-economic transitions to UK food system resilience; the PhD will feed into this output.
As well as supervision from Prof Emma Roe (lead supervisor), University of Southampton, you will also be supervised by:
- Prof Damian Maye (University of Gloucestershire)
- Dr Sarah Lambton (University of Bristol)
