Cohort 2026 Research Placement Project
About The Project
Food insecurity (FAO 2009) constitutes a public health crisis in Nottingham. A survey of 1,000 citizens found 39% reduced/skipped meals due to lack of money (NFRP 2025), more-than-double national estimates (Food Foundation 2024). The survey confirmed the lived-experience of residents (Walker et al 20252) and models that predict high-risk of food insecurity (Smith et al 2022).
Studies show food insecurity is rooted in poverty (Goudie et al 2023; JRF 2023). Furthermore, it is complicated by personal (health/isolation/low-wellbeing) and financial/economic factors (debt, benefit delays/sanctions, no/precarious employment), resulting from deprivation, limiting people’s ability to address challenges (Bull et al 2023; Walker et al 20251).
Responses to household food insecurity are often community-led, since UK governments decline to incorporate the Right to Food (UN 1948/1999) into law. Consequently, interventions maybe crisis-driven, inconsistent and ad hoc (Lambie-Mumford 2017; Walker&KanKanagme 2023).
However, there are examples of place-based leadership/coordination e.g., food charters and Right-to-Food Cities (Pettman et al 2022; Morris 2024; Sustainable Food Places1), which may improve local food insecurity responses. Furthermore, studies have identified ‘optimal’ interventions, integrating community food projects with ‘more-than-food’ services provided by public bodies (Lindberg et al 2023). These approaches have been described as “food ladders” (Blake 2019) and “Pathways Out of Food Insecurity” (Pettman 2022). They address food insecurity and factors underpinning it, building social capital and wellbeing to support more secure futures (Scottish Government 2020; Ruggeri et al 2020).
This project plays a timely and pivotal role in evaluating and informing Nottingham’s evolving response to food insecurity. The student will work closely with the Nottingham Sustainable Food Partnership (NCSFP) and Nottingham City Council, to support their commitments to establish a coordinated, integrated response. The candidate will also collaborate with community groups in neighbourhoods at high-risk of food insecurity to inform the development of existing projects to deliver more effective, comprehensive support. The project will test the concept of establishing “Neighbourhood Pathways Out of Food Insecurity and Poverty” – (part of the NCSFP’s action plan) – and reflect on how/if place-based responses can support the realization of a Right to Food, in the absence of statutory government responsibility.
Food charter: A statement of intent, a document to build momentum among partners or a framework upon which to build a strategy (Sustainable Food Places1) More-than-food: An approach that considers food a unifying theme in establishing integrated responses to environmental, economic and social challenges (Walker et al 2025)
Project Aims
The overall aims of the project are:
1. To identify and evaluate different approaches to establishing a comprehensive, rights-based response to food insecurity in cities that is coordinated, integrated and multisector across Nottingham
2. To identify the challenges, barriers to and enablers of the co-creation of an integrated, rights-based, city-wide response to food insecurity
Project Team
- Research Candidate: Georgina Ladd
- Lead Supervisor: Professor Sally Hibbert (University of Nottingham)
- Co-Supervisor: Professor William Rossiter Evans (Nottingham Trent University)
- Co-Supervisor: Eva Zemandl ( Nottingham Trent University)
- Community Supervisor: Matt Corder (Nottingham City Council – Public Health)