Grasseni's contribution to this special feature on food cultures, food systems, and agriculture in Europe builds upon her ongoing project Food citizens? Collective food procurement in European cities: solidarity and diversity, skills and scale.

The ERC project 'Food citizens?' is a comparative analysis of a growing phenomenon in Europe: collective food procurement, namely networks of people who organize direct food production, distribution, and consumption.

Cristina Grasseni’s project

Nearly all the university buildings have cafés and restaurants and in the city there are plenty of places to eat or drink. These include regular or fast-food facilities at local supermarkets, food stalls, snack bars or restaurants of all types and nationalities.

What does it mean to eat healthily and responsibly? This question is gaining a new urgency now that in many countries undernourishment is being overtaken by diseases of affluence, such as obesity, and we are also becoming more aware of the environmental impact of our eating habits. It’s time to take…

The HARVEST project explores the dietary choices that our hominin ancestors and relatives made, by recovering information on what they consumed, and how factors like environmental variation, intrinsic biology, and development of food processing technologies could have influenced their decisions.

The project 'Food citizens?' examines the consequences and premises of collective food procurement in three European cities (Rotterdam, Turin, and Gdańsk).

This project intends to provide the required knowledgebase for the design of novel mild intervention protocols to prevent fungal food spoilage.

Arnold van der Valk on Food Council MRA.

Cristina Grasseni, Federico de Musso, Ola Gracjasz, Maria Vasile, Vincent Walstra and Marilena Poulopoulou are part of the 'Food citizens?' Research project.

Today, humanity produces sufficient calories, in theory, to feed the 7.7 billion people on the planet: the amount of food produced per person on the planet has gone up more than 40% since the 1960s. Yet, ironically, the prevalence of undernourishment – which had been declining for decades – has started…

Science, Institute of Environmental Sciences (CML)

How do different communities of residents in The Hague perceive and manage food waste in relation to citizenship (rights and responsibilities)?

ASLU 7 - A.E. de Hingh

The major objective of the study is to ascertain how Japanese colonialism affected the manner in which food was produced, processed, prepared and consumed in the colony, and how new attitudes towards these practices were constructed.

A study by a Leiden-Wageningen group shows that present-day humans are biologically poorly equipped to deal with the toxins they are regularly exposed to in smoky environments: compared to earlier hominins, we modern humans are probably even worse off. The study appeared in Molecular Biology and Evolution.…

This is the first special issue of any organisation studies journal on food labour. Why is this a big deal? In this Introduction, we argue that the field should pay much more attention to the agri-food system and the work that goes into producing, distributing and consuming foodstuff. Food is such an…

How do the starchy botanical foodways reflect upon previous archaeological understandings in the northern and circum-Caribbean?

The global agri-food system plays a critical role in food security and environmental issues.

On the first weekend of June a plot of land in Lutkemeerpolder, West Amsterdam, was occupied in order to host the Food Autonomy Festival. The event was organized in solidarity with local farms to protest against the development of Schiphol airport-oriented business park. Two of our PhD's, Maria Vasile…

On Friday 4th February 2022 we welcomed in hybrid format (in person and online live streaming) 154 registered participants, of which 97 online, to present the first results of the Food Citizens? ERC Consolidator project.

“Neighborhood solidarity cannot compensate the absence of the State: a response from the local administration is needed”

Planet formation is a surprisingly homogeneous process that does not take place gradually from inside out, but that occurs everywhere at the same time in a proto-planetary disc, as Dave Lommen has discovered. He will obtain his doctorate this week based on his research into the dust around young stars…

What did our distant ancestors eat and how did they prepare their food? For the length of a month, experimental archaeologist Diederik Pomstra subjects himself to a rigorous palaeodiet. He is vlogging about his experiences to reach a non-academic audience.

Advisory Board member Colin Sage shares insights about the Food Citizens? project.

The Food Citizens? team has contributed in the special issue of the ICA journal. The semi-scientific journal of the study association Itiwana of Leiden University's Institute of Cultural Anthropology.

Between the 30th of January and the 2nd of February 2020 around 250 people took part in the II Polish Food Sovereignty Forum.

In January 2020, the team took a break from their respective field sites and travelled back to Leiden to take stock of their research progress and to host its third Advisory Board meeting at their home institution, the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology of Leiden Universit…

In late May 2019, the Food citizens? team traveled to Poland for a project meeting and team outing. This was made possible by the European Research Council’s support and facilitated networks and knowledge-generation.

The number of lions in Kenya is decreasing alarmingly, due partly to the encroaching cities and the development of the countryside. Together with local scientists and inhabitants, Leiden biologists are studying how this decline can be halted. ‘Lions are cleverer than we thought.’

We asked our Winter School students to evaluate the effect and significance of this learning experience on their current research trajectories and future plans. Here are some reflections.

The Winter School of the Food Citizens? project has been a success! Running from Monday 24th January to Friday 4th February 2022, with this milestone we handed down the project’s methodological toolkit as a team. Nine participants attended in Leiden, coming from Belgium, Ghana, Italy, Lithuania, the…

Microwear and starch grain analysis on experimental and archaeological grinding tools from Central

How can we organize the food system in the Amsterdam Metropolitan Region in a more sustainable and democratic way? Prof. Cristina Grasseni gave a presentation of her work at the Food Council Metropolitan Region Amsterdam.

Image from ESOF Forum programme page.

A political science perspective on our project’s comparative ethnography. I truly enjoyed the one-day conference on February 4th where the research results have been shared with the members of the Advisory Board. The work conducted so far is impressive, and the case studies are very useful in understanding…

Advisory Board member Francesca Forno shares insights about the Food Citizens? project.

Are you a great photographer? Or not at all, but you do have a brilliant photo that captures the relationship between food and people? Join the photo contest ‘Food & Society’ of our Faculty and send in your best photo before 3 April 2018!

We investigate bacteria and fungi to understand their malicious or beneficial impact on food crops and their pathogenic or antibiotic role in human health.

Practically the whole world came together on International Cultural Night on 29 November. International students got together on this night organised by Meeting Point for Refugee Students and showed their culture through dance, poetry, film and of course food. A great source of inspiration for fascinating…

Fungal food spoilage often starts with a contamination with spores. Experimental data strongly indicate the existence of subpopulations of spores with different levels of resistance to preservation methods.

The environment also benefits when people follow national nutritional guidelines, Paul Behrens demonstrated in research published in PNAS. The publication attracted media attention both at home and internationally.

The flavour of foodstuffs can be predicted by measuring the dynamic of their chemical components. Researchers, including Thomas Hankemeijer, will receive a grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for research in this area. They will work with DSM and Unilever.

PhD candidate Vincent Walstra reflects on alternative social interactions and mutual aid in the city of Rotterdam during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic.

This blogpost is a reflection of research assistant Marilena Poulopoulou on the food relief initiative she took part in between May and August 2020 in the city of Utrecht.

Rebecca Tompkins defended her thesis on 21 March 2019

During the Dutch famine of 1944–45, people were much more creative in finding food than we thought. Biology student Tom Vorstenbosch discovered that people did not only eat flower bulbs at that time, but also radish leaves and wild plants such as sorrel and chickweed.

If you study law, you won’t necessarily end up striding round a law firm in tailor-made suits. Alumnus Harrie Schoffelen certainly hasn’t: he made the conscious decision to follow another path in life. Together with his fiancée he runs a successful food truck on the tropical island of Bonaire. ‘Return…