Food@Manchester PhD topics

Title: Sustainable food systems in Europe: the production systems

Description:

Food is not only essential to our lives but also forms an important part of our cultural identity and plays an important role in the economy. People put much attention with regard to its taste and its effects on health. However, the impact of food production on the environment is less well known.

The food sector is now facing challenges towards a sustainable supply system, with better food quality, higher food safety and less environmental impacts. This PhD project will focus on food production systems. It will use case studies from towns in different European Union countries to explore different food production systems and the influence of social, cultural and climate change factors on their development to explore how energy resources and resulting CO2 emissions linked to food production can be cut in different countries.

The research results will help to provide recommendations to food producers and policy makers on potential pathways for future sustainable food production system in Europe.

This project will be a connected to another PhD project on ‘Sustainable food systems in Europe: a consumption-based approach project.

Title: Sustainable food systems in Europe: a consumption-based approach

Description:

This will be a joint project with the ‘Sustainable food systems in Europe: the production systems’ project. This project will start about one year later than its sister project, in order that it can apply some of the results from the technical impacts of key food products gathered from the joint project. This PhD project will then use case studies of towns in different European Union countries to assess the food consumption of key food projects of these countries and explore the influential factors behind the consumption habits, such as culture, weather and average household income. The research results will contribute to a more sustainable food consumption-consumer behaviour and recommendations will be made to food producers and the policy makers on the potential pathways of a future sustainable food production system in Europe.

Supervisors: Prof. Alice Bows-Larkin, Dr. Mirjam Roeder, Dr. Josephine Mylan

Location: University of Manchester

Contact: food@manchester.ac.uk

Other food related PhD opportunities in the University of Manchester can be found here:

http://www.food.manchester.ac.uk/phdopportunities/otherfoodrelatedphdopportunitiesintheuniversityofmanchester