Loading
Across our global cities, a diverse range of plants and dietary ingredients nourish people and enliven tables, kitchens, markets, gardens, bodies, hearts, and souls. The global presence of nutritious, delicious and culturally significant foods -- such as amaranth, bitter melon, chayote squash, daikon radish, eddo, fenugreek, gongura, hakurei turnip, ivy gourd, jute leaves, kai lan, lady finger, Malabar spinach, Napa cabbage, okra, pak choi, quince, rakkyo, shiitake, tamarind, urad bean, verdolaga, winter melon, xa lach xoong, zucchini blossoms -- emerges from the lived histories, recipes, kitchens, and gardens of the world's migrants. The diversity of foods in our modern world is directly due to the cultures, histories, ecohealth actions, and growing spaces connected to migrants. Yet, the wider significance of the migrant foodscapes of global cities such as Toronto (Canada) and London (UK) for the Anthropocene era's food sovereignty, agro-biodiversity, community health, and sustainability, is yet to be fully understood. With over a billion people on the move, international migration and migrants constitute a continuing flashpoint for debate. In current public discourse, migrants are celebrated at times, but more often, blamed and stigmatized for social ills, particularly at times of perceived crisis. This is a crucial moment in world history, as global migration increases due to climate change and geopolitics, and as cities grapple with meeting Sustainable Development Goals. With this unique Canada-UK opportunity to mobilize and disseminate scholarship toward enhanced academic and public policy knowledge outcomes, this collaborative, transnational program will mobilize, synthesize, and disseminate interdisciplinary, community-based research on how migrant foodscapes, especially the ethnocultural food gardens and connected community socio-ecological actions of urban migrants, contribute to the sustainable development of global cities and communities. Ours is a culturally, linguistically, racially, and gender diverse Canada-UK team that works at the interdisciplinary intersections of food and environmental studies, cultural studies, area studies, health, and sustainability studies. Team members have extensive experience training students and emerging scholars in participatory research approaches, social sciences and humanities research methods, multi-media research and digital humanities, in mentoring toward professional networking, and in nurturing them in community-engaged activities. This grant will enable training and mentoring opportunities for numerous students, both those directly involved with knowledge mobilization, and those who indirectly benefit from its outcomes. Future leaders will benefit from this exposure to equity-driven social policy in practice, via the program's inclusive lens on diverse urban communities that are often invisibilized. This is a transnational opportunity for emerging scholars (Yue, Elton, Rohel) to collaborate internationally with senior/mid-career scholars (Bender, Pilcher, Sharma, Song). The team is formed by experts from multiple universities, including UCL, University of Toronto, Metropolitan University of Toronto and Durham University. Team members have a strong history of engagement on transdisciplinary scholarly collaborations, and in community partnerships toward public policy outcomes. Together, they leverage this knowledge synthesis opportunity on cultures and histories to train future generations for both countries, produce academic scholarship, foster future collaboration and diverse community ties.
<script type="text/javascript">
<!--
document.write('<div id="oa_widget"></div>');
document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="https://beta.openaire.eu/index.php?option=com_openaire&view=widget&format=raw&projectId=ukri________::b22834be3f6e1e39b10fcf7606090b3a&type=result"></script>');
-->
</script>