My role

I am a Research Fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), University of Sussex and a Fellow of the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP). You can find a brief bio on the SSRP website. In 2021 I received a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Global Fellowship which is funding me to conduct full time research for three years with the first two spent in South Korea on secondment to the Mosim and Salim Research Center. My job title doesn’t give much away so let me tell you a bit of my story.

Early research

My research career began in 2008 with an interest in the role of technological and social innovation in tackling environmental and social problems. At first I explored the negative social effects of so-called “urban greening” in Seoul, South Korea. This gave me a keen awareness of the problem of eco-gentrification - the process of greening urban spaces to boost wellbeing for the wealthy at the expense of the poor. As neighborhoods are rejuvenated and made more pleasant and desirable, property values and rents rocket which displaces poorer residents into lower quality housing more distant from their places of work while at the same time creating wealth and pleasant living and working places for high income residents moving in from elsewhere.

My PhD

During my PhD I learnt Chinese in Beijing and spent over a year living in Wuhan (yes, THAT Wuhan). Here I spent time interviewing small-scale informal farmers who had migrated from rural areas to grow vegetables on the outskirts of Wuhan (the peri-urban areas which were neither fully urban nor fully rural).

It was in Wuhan that I met farmers who had set up their own co-operatives to create larger scale circular farming systems that reused wastes from one activity as inputs into another and reduced their dependence on chemical inputs while regenerating the health of the soil. Seeing their astonishing economic success accompanied by positive environmental outcomes I was inspired to look into the role of co-operatives in changing farming systems away from destructive industrial models towards more integrated agro-ecological styles of farming.

The Fellowship

After a few brief detours I am now fulfilling that goal of exploring exactly that question with colleagues at the Mosim and Salim Research Institute which is the research center of the Hansalim Federation (Hansalim’s english website) in South Korea - one of the largest multi-stakeholder organic food co-operatives in the world.

So I came to South Korea to spend a few months improving my Korean language skills. Then I got stuck into learning about Hansalim and interviewing consumer members, directors, producers and employees to get different perspectives on Hansalim’s history and its vast array of activities.

As I go along, I am writing my findings up as academic papers and as an online open access book which will be published here: book.livingtogether.xyz as it develops.