Interdisciplinary Symposium on Food Justice

This symposium explores food justice from theoretical and practical perspectives.

This symposium explores food justice from theoretical and practical perspectives. It considers what food justice is, what justice demands from food policy, and how existing regulation achieves or fails to achieve food justice. It explores food justice as an overarching term encompassing theoretical perspectives like food security, food sovereignty and the right to food, and highlights specific problems with food justice. 

The issue of food justice combines concerns regarding sustainability in both production and supply chains alongside questions over the accessibility of healthy and natural / non-modified foodstuffs for individuals and communities. It is the interplay of these considerations, specifically in terms of the role law can or should play in their regulation and governance, that makes the issue of food justice an important contemporary consideration of social justice.

This event will be invaluable to all those who wish to engage with the idea of Food Justice from both theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives, specifically, the intersection of questions of food ethics, sustainable diets, corporate ethics, investment, effective regulation and trade justice.

Speakers

Frank J. Garcia joined the Boston College Law School in 2001. He had been an associate professor at the Florida State University College of Law since 1993. He has served as a Visiting Professor at a number of schools around the world including the University of Paris, the University of New South Wales in Sydney, the University of the Republic in Uruguay, the University of Houston Law Center, and as the Katherine A. Ryan Distinguished Visiting Professor at the St. Mary's University School of Law/University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Megan Blake's research approach interrogates how social institutions, everyday practices and place produce the possibilities for and constraints on performance of food practices. Her recent and current research is located within two interrelated food focused themes. The first addresses unjust foodscapes, while the second is concerned with food surplus and waste. Her work involves co-producing research knowledge that seeks to build coping, adapting and transformation in vulnerable communities and families through food. Dr. Blake has worked with international, as well as national and locally based organizations in the UK, Hong Kong, and Hungary.

Tim Lang is a member of the EAT-Lancet Commission. The EAT-Lancet Commission published a highly influential report, ‘Food in the Anthropocene: EAT-Lancet Commission on healthy diets from sustainable food systems’ in 16 January 2019 that received a lot of publicity throughout the world. Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University London's Centre for Food Policy since 2002. He founded the Centre in 1994. After a PhD in social psychology at Leeds University, he became a hill farmer in the 1970s in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire which shifted his attention to food policy, where it has been ever since. For years, he's engaged in academic and public research and debate about its direction, locally to globally. His abiding interest is how policy addresses the mixed challenge of being food for the environment, health, social justice, and citizens. What is a good food system? How is ours measured and measuring up?

Confirmed speakers include:

• Dr. Carrie Bradshaw
• Prof. Michael Cardwell
• Prof. Louise Dye
• Dr. Alicia Epstein
• Dr. Tomaso Ferrando
• Dr. Jo Hawkins
• Dr. Jen Hendry
• Dr Carolina Orfila
• Prof. Fiona Smith
• Dr. Karen Throsby
• Dr. Ilias Trispiotis

Programme

The programme is available to download here. 

Registration

Please register here for the symposium.

Location details

Seminar Room G.33
School of Law
Liberty Building
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT

For sat navs, please use the postcode for Moorland Road, LS6 1AN. 

The Liberty Building can also be found on the campus map. 

All welcome. This is a free event, though registration is required.

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