According to a new study, for half of the world population the answer would be yes. For the other half: maybe? Leiden environmental researcher and head author Nicolas Navarre explains: ‘With improvements to crop yields, reductions in food waste, and changes in consumption patterns, 90% of people could…

Arnold van der Valk on Food Council MRA.

Lecture

People need to get to know each other to see the positive side of migration, according to photographer and documentary maker Koen Suidgeest. Since the end of September, Suidgeest has been the new city photographer for the region of Leiden. His goal is to photograph as many cultural identities as possible…

The Winter School of the Food Citizens? project has been a success! Running from Monday 24th January to Friday 4th February 2022, with this milestone we handed down the project’s methodological toolkit as a team. Nine participants attended in Leiden, coming from Belgium, Ghana, Italy, Lithuania, the…

Front-of-pack nutrition labelling, origin labelling, regulation of voluntary green claims made by food business operators: the EU is currently looking into various reforms of the legal framework for food information to consumers. The goal: healthier and more sustainable diets.

PhD defence

ASLU (Archaeological Studies Leiden University) is a peer-reviewed book series produced by the Faculty of Archaeology, Leiden University.

Punching Back is a detailed ethnographic study that demonstrates that young Muslim women who kickbox develop agentive selves by challenging gender norms, challenging expectations, and living out their religious subjectivities.

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

In the article Multimodality: Reshaping Anthropology, Mark Westmoreland describes how multimodality provides anthropologists with a new perspective on how we conduct research, produce scholarship, teach students, and interact with diverse audiences.

This minor critically examines the complexities of food sustainability through ecological, socio-economic, political, and cultural systems.

Our Winter School alumna Ginevra Montefusco defended her Master thesis this March with the title Food in the Margin: a feminist analysis of sense of place in Barriera di Milano, Turin (supervisors: Alessia Toldo and Egidio Dansero).

If you follow the western media, you are likely to think of ‘Africa’ as the continent of origin of desperate migrants, a continent of hunger and disease and a breeding ground for international terrorism. But if you want to see the bigger picture, you should look no further than the African Studies scholars…

Research by Leiden University, LUMC and the Public Health Department (GGD Haaglanden) in The Hague has shown that over a quarter of the families in the city who took part in the survey experience some form of food insecurity. Some families have too little money to make a healthy meal or are worried…

In January 2020, the team took a break from their respective field sites and travelled back to Leiden to take stock of their research progress and to host its third Advisory Board meeting at their home institution, the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden Universit…

How can we organize the food system in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region in a more sustainable and democratic way? Prof. Cristina Grasseni gave a presentation of her work at the Food Council Metropolitan Region Amsterdam.

Psychologist Hilmar Zech found that overweight people are actually more attracted to food pictures after eating than before. He did so using an old research method that he revamped for use on smartphones. Zech will defend his PhD on 30 April.

The Food citizens? team has included two post-docs, three Ph.D. candidates and two research assistants working with the Principal Investigator. The Winter School involved nine Masters and Ph.D. candidates from the universities of Bologna, Gothenburg, Kaunas, Leiden, Louvain, Tromsø, Turin and Utrech…

We asked our Winter School students to evaluate the effect and significance of this learning experience on their current research trajectories and future plans. Here are some reflections.

Image from ESOF Forum programme page.

The d12n Research Cluster provides a space for inquiry and intervention into the ongoing digit(al)isation of culture, society, and scholarship. The research cluster aims to link CADS Institute researchers to each other as well as to experts and praticioners from around the world as we combine thinking…

A political science perspective on our project’s comparative ethnography. I truly enjoyed the one-day conference on February 4th where the research results have been shared with the members of the Advisory Board. The work conducted so far is impressive, and the case studies are very useful in understanding…

Advisory Board member Francesca Forno shares insights about the Food Citizens? project.

The flavour of foodstuffs can be predicted by measuring the dynamic of their chemical components. Researchers, including Thomas Hankemeijer, will receive a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for research in this area. They will work with DSM and Unilever.

On 1 June 2022, Bruno Braak defended his thesis entitled 'Overcoming ruptures: Zande identity, governance, and tradition during cycles of war and displacement in South Sudan and Uganda (2014-2019).' The doctoral research was supervised by Prof.dr. J.M. Otto, Dr.ir. C.I.M. Jacobs, and Dr. C. Leonardi…

Part of ‘Moralising Misfortune: A Comparative Anthropology of Commercial Insurance’, an ERC Consolidator project of Erik Bähre.

Jifeng Liu defended his thesis on 2 February 2017

On the first weekend of June a plot of land in Lutkemeerpolder, West Amsterdam, was occupied in order to host the Food Autonomy Festival. The event was organized in solidarity with local farms to protest against the development of Schiphol airport-oriented business park. Two of our PhD's, Maria Vasile…

On 30 November 2021 the book 'Audiovisual and Digital Ethnography: A Practical and Theoretical Guide' was published by Routledge. The book resulted from eight anthropologists of the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology joining forces: Cristina Grasseni, Bart Barendregt, Erik…

The Leiden University Visual Ethnography collection has been added to Alexander Street Press, an educational streaming video service. The master’s specialization Visual Ethnography has supported many talented individuals to produce inspiring films. About 70 master’s thesis films of the past 8 years…

'Re-territorialising skills? Insights from ethnography on solidarity-economy food activism' is written by Cristina Grasenni and published in the Special Feature: Original Article Agriculture (re‐)territorialisation: Balancing the promotion of local products and international trade in Europe.

A plant-based diet could improve the resilience of our food system. Moving to such a diet in the European Union (EU) and United Kingdom (UK) alone could replace almost all the production losses from Russia and Ukraine. That’s what an international team of researchers conclude in Nature Food. Leiden…

Visual ethnography has become an integral part of anthropology in Leiden. The students from the master’s specialisation will present their work at the LUVE festival on 8, 9 and 10 October. ‘For a film you have to negotiate with your research participants.’

Throughout the year, the organisation 'Voedsel Anders' organizes an events series that showcase various local food initiatives in Dutch cities.

From documentaries, zines and exhibitions to a video installation. Students of the Visual Ethnography master's programme pulled out all the stops to finish their studies in a fantastic way. For one year, the 23 students worked on their own multimedia projects. The screening of the projects took place…

'Don’t Let the sunny weather fool you' a film made by Visual Ethnography alumna Guusje Meeuwissen has been selected for the RAI film festival in London this year. It's a short film about the everyday lives of a farmer and a fisherman in the Philippines, and their capacity to adapt to a changing natural…

On Friday January 13 between 13.00 - 15.00 (room C 1.04 of the Old Observatory) there will be another Leiden Socio-Legal Lecture, entitled 'Constitutional Ethnography, Counter-Constitutions, and the Study of Form, Sediment and Trajectory'.

“Neighborhood solidarity cannot compensate the absence of the State: a response from the local administration is needed”

Ichthyoarchaeological and biomolecular research to assess the trophic ecology of the Rhine-Meuse delta in the Holocene

Nanomaterials can pass much further along the food chain than was previously thought. The particles can change shape and size in each organism, enabling them to pass on to the next one in the chain. Researchers from the Institute of Environmental Sciences discovered this accidentally when using a novel…

Microwear and starch grain analysis on experimental and archaeological grinding tools from Central

Wilke Geurds graduated from the Visual Ethnography master's programme last year with her intimate and vulnerable documentary 'F*ck Endo. More than just menstrual pain.'.

Our Institute’s research focuses on ‘global vulnerabilities and social resilience’. Specifically, we highlight three interconnected themes: diversity, sustainability, and digitalisation.

Archaeobotanic research by prof. dr. C. Bakels and students on agriculture.