Keynote Speakers

The ESRS 2015 committee are pleased to announce their keynote speakers. They are:

Professor Harriet Friedmann, University of Toronto, Sociologia Ruralis Lecture

Title: Precipice and Possibility: A Food Regime Approach to Emergent Futures of Growing and Eating

Biography: Harriet Friedmann, food systems analyst, author, and speaker, is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Toronto, based at the Munk School of Global Studies, and a Visiting Professor of Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague. She participates in international research and policy on food and agriculture, most recently with The Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro (2014) and the Centre International en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement  in Montpellier (2012-13). She participated in the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science, and Technology for Development (IAASTD) and serves on the editorial boards of several international journals related to food and agriculture. Friedmann is a member and former chair of the Toronto Food Policy Council, a pioneer in linking civil society and municipal governments in comprehensive food strategy, and a member of the board of USC-Canada, devoted to participatory seed networks. She developed the food regimes approach (with Philip McMichael), and is currently preparing a book on Political Ecology of Food (with Tony Weis). She was awarded the 2011 Lifetime Achievement award by the Canadian Association of Food Studies. 

Abstract: How might a food regime perspective help to interpret present unfolding transitions across scales of land use, cultural and social organization, and political and economic institutions? Food regimes can sensitize our interpretations of present transitions - which may include both very small and very large scale changes- by understanding those of the past, particularly the foregone possibilities rendered invisible by linear histories of the constellations that actually emerged. I explore cycles at multiple spatial and temporary scales, including the possibility that human relations to the earth (our species' "mode of foodgetting") is in an extended 500 year transition towards either a much degraded future (anticipated by apocalyptic cultural productions) or a more diverse, abundant future, whose emergent elements we can train our eyes to see.

Professor Terry Marsden, Cardiff University

Title: Natural Powers: exploring the rural eco-economy 'beyond neo-liberalism' 

Biography: Nigel Swain a Senior Lecturer in History at the School of Histories, Languages and Cultures, University of Liverpool.  He graduated in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge in 1973. His PhD, also from Cambridge, examined the social and economic forces underlying Hungary's relatively successful collectivisation of agriculture. In the 1980s he worked outside the academic sector as a computer programmer and systems analyst, but returned to university life after the Berlin Wall was breached.  Dr Swain has undertaken seminal research into political developments in East Central Europe and the Balkans, addressing land reform and decollectivisation, social capital, and changes to rural economy and society. He is the author of numerous books and journal articles, including ‘Green Barons, Force-of-Circumstance Entrepreneurs, Impotent Mayors’(2014), ‘Collective farms which work’(1985, re-issued in 2008) and four editions of ‘Eastern Europe since 1945’.  He addressed issues relating to neoliberalism and Eastern Europe in his paper ‘A Post-Socialist Capitalism’ (2011) Europe-Asia Studies.

Please note there are still more names to be announced.