Collaboratory 2027 PhD Project
Key Details
Project Title: Circular Cooking: Co-designing Food, Energy, and Resource Resilience with Nottingham Communities (CIRCoN)
Deadline:11:59pm, 29th November 2026
Host University: Nottingham Trent University
School/department: School of Architecture Design and the Built Environment
Start date: Thursday 1st April 2027
Funding offer: Tuition fees covered in full (worth approx. £15-17k across full PhD programme). Monthly stipend based on £21,805 per annum, pro rata, tax free.
Working hours: Full-time (minimum 37.5 hrs per week).
Working style: Primarily in-person at host university. Flexible working supported. Working pattern to be agreed between successful candidate and lead supervisor.
Project Supervisors
- Lead Academic Supervisor: Professor Amin Al-Habaibeh, Nottingham Trent University
- Academic Co-Supervisor: Dr Farah Shahrin, Nottingham Trent University
- Academic Co-Supervisor: Dr Serik Tokbolat, University of Nottingham
- Community Supervisor: Charlie Collins, Himmah
About The Project
Food banks provide essential access to food, but whether people can prepare, cook, store and preserve that food is often overlooked. For lower-income households, this can depend on energy costs, appliances, kitchen and storage space, housing conditions and cultural cooking practices.
Himmah runs Nottingham’s largest independent food bank, distributing more than 1,000 food parcels each month, including Halal provision. Its reporting shows that rising energy bills and living costs are increasing demand. Himmah also provides hot meals for people without cooking facilities and runs cooking classes on preparing nutritious meals on a tight budget. This PhD has been developed with Himmah to explore this gap in relation to its work and communities.
Food insecurity is usually understood as whether a household can get enough food. Less attention is paid to whether households have the space, equipment, money and energy to turn that food into meals. This is an overlooked link between food insecurity and the move to Net Zero, which aims to cut carbon emissions and balance out any that remain.
This PhD will explore how everyday cooking in lower-income homes could become more “circular”. That means wasting less food and energy, using food and appliances for longer, and reusing or recovering resources where possible. Through cooking sessions with community members, alongside a look at housing and kitchen conditions, the research will examine what helps or holds back circular cooking in practice.
Community members will share their experience and cooking knowledge to identify barriers and develop realistic solutions together. The project will produce a people-centred Circular Cooking Framework linking housing, energy and food. It will give food banks, housing providers, councils and other organisations practical guidance to support affordable, culturally appropriate and resource-efficient cooking, contributing to a fairer Net Zero transition.
This project has been co-created with and is supervised by researchers from Nottingham Trent University, the University of Nottingham, and partners at Himmah Food Bank. The successful candidate for this project will be enrolled at Nottingham Trent University.
Project Aims
This project aims to support households experiencing food insecurity by investigating how everyday cooking practices can contribute to more circular household and community resource systems by examining how housing and kitchen conditions shape food and energy use, resource losses, and opportunities for reuse, recovery and recirculation.
The project objectives are:
- To examine how everyday cooking practices, together with housing and kitchen conditions, shape food and energy use, resource losses and circular practices within lower-income households and communities.
- To identify and evaluate the opportunities, barriers and trade-offs associated with reducing avoidable food and energy losses and enabling feasible forms of resource reuse, recovery and recirculation associated with cooking.
- To co-develop a people-centred Circular Cooking Framework that identifies practical, affordable and culturally appropriate pathways towards more circular cooking practices at household and community scales.
Core Competencies
Category | Competencies | Assessed: Application (A), Interview (I) |
Comprehension and evaluation | Strong understanding of the project and its subject matter. | A / I |
Analytical, researcher mindset with keen attention to detail. | A / I | |
Communicate complex concepts with clarity and precision. | A / I | |
Able to identify connections, patterns, gaps, and irregularities in information/data. | I | |
Able to interpret data/information confidently with logic and empathy to derive meaning. | I | |
Social and emotional | Demonstrable experience of responding effectively to changing contexts, information and demands. | A |
Ability to persevere in the face of challenges/failures and to remain constructive in developing solutions. | A | |
Demonstrable passion for learning with clear drive and curiosity to undertake this specific research project. | A / I | |
Willingness to immerse oneself in the research subject matter and make a contribution to new knowledge through a PhD. | A / I | |
Strong desire to make a positive community impact through the research. | A / I | |
Willingness to think deeply about complex concepts and engage with academic ideas and theory. | A / I | |
Preparedness and potential for success | Experience of working, collaborating and communicating effectively with different stakeholders. | A |
High level of self-motivation and ability to work with minimal guidance. | A / I | |
Strong organisational and time-management skills with the ability to balance and prioritise multiple tasks. | A / I | |
Ability to identify potential challenges and complexities and thoughtfully consider possible solutions. | A / I | |
Able to identify the technical, personal, or professional skills required for a task and take action to develop these. | A / I | |
Community Context | Genuine desire to undertake community-engaged research over more traditional approaches to research. | A |
Understand the impact of and need for the inclusion of diverse experiences and points of view in research. | A / I | |
Appreciation/understanding of the importance of community insight and experience in the generation of new knowledge. | A / I | |
Awareness/understanding of the broader societal context related to the subject matter of the project. | A / I |
Project-Specific Competencies
| Essential | Assessed: Application (A), Interview (I) | Desirable | Assessed: Application (A), Interview (I) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Experience of engaging respectfully and sensitively with people from different cultural, social and economic backgrounds, including underserved communities. This could come from paid work, volunteering, community activities, public service or other settings. | A / I | Experience involving food preparation, food banks or community cooking, gained through paid work, volunteering, community activities, caring responsibilities or other settings. | A / I |
| An understanding of how household costs, housing conditions, access to appliances, food practices or cultural circumstances can affect everyday life, gained through work, community involvement, volunteering or lived experience. | A / I | Some familiarity with social or rented housing, household energy use, fuel poverty (struggling to afford to heat or power a home) or energy efficiency. This includes an interest in how food, energy and household resources can be used, reused or managed more sustainably. | A / I |
| The ability to involve people in informal, hands-on activities and to create a welcoming space where participants feel comfortable sharing their experiences, views and knowledge. | A / I | Experience of communicating or working with people from different cultural or language backgrounds, which would support engagement with Nottingham’s diverse communities. | A / I |
| Knowledge and appreciation of how food and cooking practices vary across cultures, households and communities, and an openness to learning from different kinds of knowledge and lived experience. | A / I | Experience of supporting or running group activities, such as workshops, community events, cooking sessions or training, and helping people feel comfortable taking part. | A / I |
References for Further Reading
- Foster, J.A. and Poston, A. (2023). Domestic energy consumption: temporal unregulated electrical energy consumption in kitchens in Scottish affordable and social housing. Energy Efficiency, 16, 62.Available: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12053-023-10143-3
- Brady, J. (2011). Cooking as Inquiry: A Method to Stir Up Prevailing Ways of Knowing Food, Body, and Identity. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 10(4), 321–334. Available: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/160940691101000402
- Pettinger, C., Parsons, J., Letherby, G., Cunningham, M., Withers, L. and Whiteford, A. (2019). Participatory food events as collaborative public engagement opportunities. Methodological Innovations, 12(2). Available: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2059799119863283
- Lehtokunnas, T., Mattila, M., Närvänen, E. and Mesiranta, N. (2020). Towards a circular economy in food consumption: Food waste reduction practices as ethical work. Journal of Consumer Culture, 22(1), 227–245. Available: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1469540520926252
- Shaw, P.J. (2021). Avoidable Household Food Waste: Diagnosing the Links between Causes and Composition. Recycling, 6(4), 80. Available: https://www.mdpi.com/2313-4321/6/4/80
- Food Standards Agency (2023). Consumer Insights Tracker – September 2023. Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/consumer-insights-tracker/consumer-insights-tracker
- Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (2024). United Kingdom Food Security Report 2024: Theme 4 – Food Security at Household Level. Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2024/united-kingdom-food-security-report-2024-theme-4-food-security-at-household-level
- Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (2026). Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics Report 2026. Available: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-fuel-poverty-statistics-report-2026
- Monteza-Quiroz, D., Silva, A., & Sactic, M. I. (2025). Cooking skills and food insecurity. PloS one, 20(6), e0326435. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0326435
- Sadanand, A., Dubey, V.K., Pushpalatha, R. and Sankaranarayanan, K. (2026). Reframing rural food system transformation: a participatory consumption-centered framework for vulnerable communities. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, 10. Available: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2026.1882546/full