The Mistra Food Futures programme organised a cross-disciplinary conference on food and sustainability transformations targeting early career researchers. This lunch-to-lunch conference was held at Stockholm Waterfront on the 29th and 30th of May. It provided an opportunity for participants to present and discuss their research as well as to extend their networks across various disciplinary fields of sustainable food systems transformation research.
The cross-disciplinary nature of this conference is of great value as it enables researchers from various disciplines to come together to learn about different ways of doing research that contributes to sustainable food transformations. Importantly, rather than a discipline-oriented conference or network, this initiative focuses on sustainable food systems transformations as the basis for discussion and networking. Such networking matters since majority of the participants are trained within specific disciplines that have their own jargon, styles, and research practices. It is widely recognised that any discipline on their own cannot make transformation happen. Cross-disciplinary meetings such as these build relations across fields, breaking down knowledge siloes. In turn, creating opportunities for a rich and diverse network of researchers that can make substantial impact on food futures. At this event, participants of this network recognised the value of building relations that span across disciplines, universities and research institutes.
While Mistra Food Futures has initiated this early career research network, it is expected to continue with combination of self-organising events where network participants organise networking events (e.g. study-visits, workshops and seminars) as well as events coordinated by Mistra Food Futures such as annual conferences. If you are interested join this network, please contact per-anders.langendahl@slu.se.
