About us

We are researchers based at the University of Bristol and the University of Nottingham. We are interested in food supply chains, the people involved in them and farming to fork practices.

We are passionate about driving change for better food systems, by which we mean food systems that work in harmony with nature and are socially inclusive and equitable. We met in 2012 and have been friends and colleagues since. We work together wherever possible, supporting each other in professional and personal spaces.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals identify the urgency of developing Responsible Consumption and Production (UNDP 2015, Goal 12) to combat growing social and environmental challenges. To address critical sustainability concerns related to food production, there is a need for a fundamental rethinking of food supply chains (FSCs) and how they connect consumers and lead firms to farmers. Supply chains are fundamental to the transition to ecologically harmonious and socially equitable societies. Our work aligns with these ambitions.

Our research interests are:

Power dynamics in food supply chains and their implications for equitable transitions
Marginalised and hidden voices in food systems
Rural communities,farming and food labour
Imagination and food futures.
Critical engaged approaches and perspectives

Academic engagement

Our collaborative work, with others, has been published in various academic journals The International Journal of Logistics Management; Work, Employment and Society, the Journal of Supply Chain Management and Organization.

We have co-authored a book chapter for the Handbook of Research Methods in Supply Chain Management.
We regularly present our work at conferences including: European Operations Management Assocation (EurOMA), Sustainability Forum, Sustainable Consumption Research and Action Initiative (SCORAI), European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS), British Academy of Management
We have also co-organised a series of workshops and conferences around food, farming and engaged methodologies.

Whenever possible we disseminate our work through blogs and podcasts

LISTEN & READ

Meet the researchers

Dr Anne Touboulic

Associate Professor

Dr Anne Touboulic is associate professor at the University of Nottingham (UK) and a member of the leadership team of the Future Food Beacon, an interdisciplinary centre for food research. Anne has an interdisciplinary background in the social sciences and her research is inherently boundary-spanning. Anne is associate editor of the Journal of Supply Chain Management and senior editor at the open access journal M@n@gement. She is a member of the executive committee of the EurOMA Forum on Sustainable Operations and Supply Chains.

Dr Lucy McCarthy

Senior Lecturer

Dr Lucy McCarthy is a senior lecturer at the University of Bristol, School of Management. She is a member of the Food Justice Network and ARCIO, the Action Research and Critical Inquiry in Organisations. Her background is in community and rural development, particularly around challenges of historically marginalised areas.

Vision and Values

Our shared values are firmly rooted in respect of nature, the belief of solidarity, fairness, inclusivity, and integrity. We also challenge ourselves and have fun.

We endeavour to support our colleagues and students through our allyship and reflexive mentoring, where appropriate. We also acknowledge at times that the best thing we can do is to step out in order to provide space for others. We use our positionality and whatever power we have to create open and safe spaces for individual and collective flourishing. We endeavour only to speak from the contexts that we know and live in, and are always keen to learn from others and engage in further reflexivity. We also endeavour to challenge discourses and practices that do not align with our values.

We seek to let these values guide all of our research, teaching and engagement activities.

Our research primarily focuses on issues related to the transition to sustainable food systems, and our hope and purpose is to foster change through research and activism. Key to this is the dissemination of what we learn into the public domain to be shared and challenged.

We have the same ethos and are passionate about engaged approaches to research, which enable collaborating with traditionally marginalised stakeholders to shape future imaginings and practice.

With our work we hope to achieve change through engagement with communities, challenging dominant discourses, and to imagine and achieve better.

We seek to embed an ethics of care approach in all that we do. Caring is simultaneously ‘an affective state, a material vital doing, and an ethico-political obligation’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011: 90). Acts of care are always embroiled in complex politics. Deploying the political dimension of care in our work can support uncovering experiences and visions that can foster more equitable practices (Martin et al., 2015). This following quote captures our values:

“We have the same ethos and are passionate about engaged approaches to research, which enable collaborating with traditionally marginalised stakeholders to shape future imaginings and practice.

With our work we hope to achieve change through engagement with communities, challenging dominant discourses, and to imagine and achieve better.

We seek to embed an ethics of care approach in all that we do. Caring is simultaneously ‘an affective state, a material vital doing, and an ethico-political obligation’ (Puig de la Bellacasa, 2011: 90). Acts of care are always embroiled in complex politics. Deploying the political dimension of care in our work can support uncovering experiences and visions that can foster more equitable practices (Martin et al., 2015). This following quote captures our values:”

We view care as fundamental for living with and alongside others, and this includes non-human others.

These values underpin our approach to research, education and life.

Our work

We work on a variety of projects on how to transition to better food systems for all. We collaborate with a range of people and hope that our work can help drive change.

Food systems have become deeply unequitable and based on the assumption that nature can be exploited endlessly. Our work has the dual purpose of understanding how we got here and how we can change the current system. We believe that we should not disconnect the past from how we attempt to imagine the future as we are grappling with climate change and the current ecological crisis.

Food, its production, consumption and circulation, is an inherently political issue. Food although fundamental to human survival is not a public good in the global capitalist economy; it is a commodity with a market value and as such has exclusionary properties, and the policies, relationships and practices as well as ways of organising behind the production, consumption and circulation of food have become the showground for multiple, often competing, powerful profit-seeking corporate actors.

Through our work, we aim to expose and challenge existing power structures and encourage participation from marginalised players. We hope that findings from our projects can contribute to human flourishing in an embedded relationship with the wider ecology of the planet.

Joint publications

McCarthy, L., Touboulic, A. & Glover, J. (2021). Who’s Milking It? Scripted Stories of Food Labour Processes. Work, Employment & Society doi: 10.1177/0950017021997357

Who’s Milking It? Scripted Stories of Food Labour ProcessesView Publication

Touboulic, A., McCarthy, L., & Matthews, L. (2020). Re-imagining supply chain challenges through critical engaged research. Journal of Supply Chain Management 56(2): 36 -51.

Re-imagining supply chain challenges through critical engaged researchView Publication

Touboulic, A. & McCarthy, L. (2019). Collective Action in SCM: A call for activist research, International Journal of Logistics Management, 31(1): 3-20

A call for activist research, International Journal of Logistics ManagementView Publication

Touboulic, A., McCarthy, L., Sanno, A. & Reuter C. (2022) Action research for supply chain management: reflections and practical guide, in Childe, S and Soares, A. (ed) Handbook of Research Methods in Supply Chain Management. Edward Elgar Publishers, pp. 149-168

Handbook of Research Methods for Supply Chain ManagementView Publication

Touboulic, A. & McCarthy, L. (2021) (Re)-imagining ecologically harmonious food systems beyond technofixes. Revue de l’Organisation Responsable, 16(2): 18-27.

Imagining ecologically harmonious food systems beyond technofixesView Publication

McCarthy, L., Touboulic, A. & Matthews, L., (2018). Voiceless but empowered farmers in corporate supply chains: Contradictory imagery and instrumental approach to empowerment. Organization, 25(5): 609-635.

Voiceless but empowered farmers in corporate supply chainsView Publication

Our Partners

Contact | Bristol

University of Bristol
– Business School
Howard House
Queens Avenue
Bristol, BS8 1SD

Contact | Nottingham

Nottingham University
– Business School
University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus
Nottingham, NG8 1BB