Inaugural Lecture: Professor Ann Bruce

Food for thought: a research journey crossing boundaries

My first published paper at the University of Edinburgh was on Transboundary risk regulation, and the concept of crossing boundaries feels like a good summary of my academic career.

Having achieved the milestone of 25 years at the University, I reflect on the many different boundaries that I have crossed during those years: from Secretary to Professor, from quantitative natural scientist to qualitative social scientist, from specialising in livestock genetics to increasing interest in ecology, from PhD student to trying to manage an interdisciplinary team of researchers.

My research has been associated with food systems, but especially around livestock, throughout my career. My argument is that food production, and provisioning, need to be considered as part of a complex system, involving not just ideals about how food should be produced but in recognition of the environmental, regulatory, social and economic factors that mean things are actually done one way rather than another. I will suggest that you cannot treat different agricultural areas as though they are the same, and to have one size fits all policies. The challenges and opportunities can vary hugely from place to place. My second point is the need for more cross policy area thinking – housing, schools, roads – all have big impacts on food systems. I will also attempt to tackle the elephant in the room, and that is the question of should we have livestock, particularly grazing livestock at all? Wouldn’t it be better to just rewild everything? I will outline how I try to make sense of this controversial issue.

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