Who we are: core staff
Tara Garnett is a researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of the Oxford Martin School. She has worked on food issues for over 20 years, first in the NGO community and, since 2005 within the academic sector. Tara’s work centres on the interactions among food, climate, health and broader sustainability issues and she has a particular interest in livestock as a sector where many of these converge. She is also interested in how knowledge is communicated to and interpreted by policy makers, civil society organisations and industry, and in the values that these different stakeholders bring to food problems and possible solutions. Tara founded the Food Climate Research Network in 2005, originally at the University of Surrey, before it relocated to Oxford.
Tara has a degree in English Literature (University of Oxford), a Masters in Development Studies (School of Oriental and African Studies, London) and a PhD in food systems analysis (University of Surrey). In 2015 she was awarded the Premio Daniel Carasso for her work.
Tara is keen to collaborate through the FCRN with other organisations to undertake research, organise events and build and extend interdisciplinary, intersectoral knowledge in this field. Her email address is taragarnett@fcrn.org.uk
Milja Fenger is one of two Research and Communications Officers at FCRN who joined the organisation in August 2016. She completed her undergraduate degree in Human Sciences at the University of Oxford in 2013, focusing on combining social and biological sciences to better understand environmental conservation challenges. After an Erasmus year at Copenhagen University she then returned to the UK to research NGO influence on the palm oil industry in Central Africa for her MPhil degree in Conservation at the University of Cambridge. She has conducted fieldwork in India, Malaysia and Cameroon and likes to use interdisciplinary approaches to examine issues around food, environment and human wellbeing. In addition, Milja writes and directs plays and films and is interested in how narratives can help in communicating academic or philosophical ideas in accurate but accessible ways.
Email Milja at miljafenger@fcrn.org.uk
Samuel Lee-Gammage is a Research and Communications officer at FCRN, and joined the team in August 2016. Together with Milja, his role is to develop FCRN’s website, communications, and online resources such as Foodsouce, among other things. He holds an MSc in Environmental Change and Management from the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford, and a BSc in Environmental Geosciences from the University of Bristol. As an undergraduate, Sam attended international climate change negotiations and following graduation, researched scenario-based decision-making for climate change adaptation in the UK water industry, at Exeter University. At Oxford, Sam travelled to Humla Nepal to study the livelihood and natural resource impacts of the declining practice of transhumance, as part of a team of students studying socio-ecological change and food security in the region. This led to an interest in food systems and later a period of two years working for a private American foundation, focussed on communicating more widely, the body of research on the environmental impacts of food demand. Sam is interested in a broad range of food system issues, especially those at the nexus of sustainable healthy diets: understanding how dietary demand can be aligned with environmental limits while providing health synergies. He also works part-time for the RSPB on agricultural emissions policy and so has a professional interested in understanding what sustainable agricultural mitigation looks like and in identifying its global and EU potential.
Email Sam at samleegammage@fcrn.org.uk
The website manager, John Jackson, has a degree in Zoology from Durham University and a PhD from the University of Reading on the biochemical toxicology of avian serum esterases. In 1995 he jumped tracks into the world of design, working for a small design company for three years. In 1998 he left to set up the Argument by Design (tAbD). Primarily a freelance project, tAbD has links with a loose network of designers and web developers who collaborate on an ad hoc basis. He concentrates on standards-compliant web design and development, with a particular interest in environmental, educational and social welfare projects. He has been working on the FCRN website since 2007. You can email John: johnjackson@fcrn.org.uk.
Marie Persson is the Communications and network development officer at FCRN. She joined the FCRN team in September 2012 and her role involves coordinating communications and outreach activities, networking and knowledge exchange. Marie is a Master student in International Administration and Global Governance (Gothenburg University, Sweden) and she has completed master-level studies in Communication for Development. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from Uppsala University in Sweden.
Before joining the FCRN Marie worked as a consultant and intern with the UNDP Oslo Governance Centre. She has also worked with smallholder farmers in Honduras. She is interested in issues at the nexus between development and environment, especially governance and institutional aspects and sustainable prosperity measures beyond GDP. Get in touch with Marie: mariepersson@fcrn.org.uk
Associates
Elin studies the environmental impacts from food production and consumption from a system perspective using mostly life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool. Her current work revolves around the definition and design of sustainable diets for the future, work that she is doing for the Future Agriculture initiative here at SLU. She is interested in questions such as what we choose to use our agricultural land for, how resource efficient and less environmentally damaging food production systems can be designed and how we can measure different aspects of sustainability in this context. Currently in Oxford working as a visiting researcher at the Environmental Change Institute, she is also an Associate with the FCRN network.
Andreas trained in anthropology and economics (PhD, environmental anthropology, 2005) and worked in China for 16 years on natural resource management and agricultural extension, mostly in rangeland management and livestock services. Since 2008, much of his work has focused on payments for environmental services, including climate change mitigation in agriculture. Since 2011 he has been based in the UK, and is Director of Values for Development, a company providing research and advisory services on climate change adaptation and mitigation in agriculture, and linking international organizations with partners in China. He was a co-researcher on FCRN’s study of China’s changing food system.
Volunteers
A graduate in Marine Biology with Oceanography and a current MSc Science Communication student at Imperial College London, Leanna has a strong interest in communicating global environmental issues. She loves communicating though several media forms- photography, videography and graphics, such as infographics and data visualization. Currently she is volunteering with FCRN to produce an in-depth inforgaphic to inform the FCRN community on the debate between land sharing vs wildlife friendly farming.
Jess began working as an intern for FCRN as part of her PhD training year, and has continued to work with the FCRN part-time.
She will be carrying out her PhD research at the University of Warwick as part of the Midlands Integrative Biology Training Partnership, with a focus on Food Security (Plant and Crop sciences). Prior to starting at Warwick, Jess completed her undergraduate degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, where she continued on to complete her PGCE, before teaching science to 11-16 year olds in Cambridgeshire. Environmental issues were the main driver behind Jess’ pursuit of a scientific career; she now wishes to combine her scientific and educational experience to help communicate current thinking and research on the crucial interface between global food systems and climate change.
Rosanne works as an intern for the FCRN as part of her Doctoral Training year at Warwick University. Before starting her PhD in 2016 she completed a Knowledge Transfer Partnership between Elsoms Seeds and Warwick University, focused on embedding plant pathology protocols and facilities in the company http://www.elsoms.com/news/view/elsoms-seeds-and-warwick-university-combine-forces. She achieved her MSc in Plant Genetics and Crop Improvement at the John Innes Centre and University of East Anglia in 2014, where her enthusiasm for legumes was encouraged https://www.jic.ac.uk/pea-homepage/opportunities-pea/#.
Alongside the internship Rosanne has been developing an interdisciplinary approach to food systems research, by undertaking a mini-project in the University of Birmingham School of Psychology. This involved investigating how social norms influence what we choose to eat. Her main research interests lie in using pulses to help address problems of current food systems, particularly improving disease resistance in pulse crops.
Before all that, she worked as a Head Gardener and horticulturalist.
Sarah-Jane Tucker is working as an intern for the FCRN and is a part-time Msc Food Policy student at City University, with a particular interest in issues relating to sustainable food. She holds a BA(Hons) Business and Marketing Communications and a CIM Diploma in Marketing. Prior to raising three young children, Sarah-Jane had a small internet consultancy business for SME’s and enjoyed sales and marketing roles at McSaatchi, News International and MCI Worldcom.