Our team at the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures draws from a range of expertise to conduct food systems research in Australia and internationally in partnership with funders and other stakeholders. We take a 'food systems' approach to understand and address issues across the food value chain and associated human and ecological drivers of change. This includes engaging stakeholders in protecting peri-urban food systems, creating organic waste value chains, linking gender outcomes to water and food systems, assessing the vulnerability of food systems to climate change and phosphorus scarcity, and designing food systems programs in the Pacific region.
Associate Professor Dana Cordell
Lead
Food systems, peri-urban agriculture, organic waste value chains, phosphorus security
Assoc. Prof. Dana Cordell is a Research Director at ISF, where she leads the Food Systems research group. She works with stakeholders across Australia, South Asia, Europe and North America to identify how food systems can transform in response to sustainability challenges, ranging from urban sprawl to the emerging global phosphorus challenge. She co-led P-FUTURES, an international collaborative project with 90 partners aiming at understanding how urban food systems can respond to phosphorus challenges. She also led the Sydney’s Food Futures project, which looked at how to increase the resilience of Sydney’s food system. As a global food security expert, Assoc. Prof. Cordell provides expert advice to the UN and national governments. Her internationally recognised research on global phosphorus vulnerability and security was awarded one of Australia’s top science prizes – a Eureka Prize.
Dr Federico Davila
Deputy Lead
Food systems and social science
Dr Federico Davila is an interdisciplinary social scientist working on food systems and international development. Trained in human ecology and systems thinking, he focuses on how knowledge from different sectors can be integrated to design better food systems policies and research. He has also worked with smallholder farming communities in Southeast Asia and the Pacific, looking at food security and food sovereignty in different systems. His work on biodiversity conservation focuses on identifying strategies to better integrate the social components of conservation to the current thinking and practices of biodiversity conservation.
Associate Professor Brent Jacobs
Climate change adaptation and food systems
Assoc. Prof. Brent Jacobs is a Research Director at ISF, where he leads the Climate Change Adaptation research area. Assoc. Prof. Jacobs is a specialist in climate change impacts and adaptation, with a particular focus on the agricultural sector. He uses participatory approaches to develop vulnerability assessments, regional adaptation plans and monitoring and evaluation of stakeholders’ adaptive capacities. Assoc. Prof. Jacobs led multiple large-scale projects, including the NSW Climate Adaptation Research Hub Adaptive Communities Node.
Fiona Berry
Community and region building through food systems and urban agriculture
Fiona is a Senior Research Consultant and project manager at ISF, with a passion for building communities and regions through urban agriculture and local food systems. She has experience in managing projects that minimise food waste, localise food systems and permaculture principles. She is also experienced in researching sustainable urban development, corporate sustainability, carbon mitigation and alternative energy in Australia and overseas.
Associate Professor Roel Plant
Land use and conservation planning
Assoc. Prof. Roel Plant is a Research Director at ISF, where he leads the Landscapes and Ecosystems, Climate Adaptation and Food Systems team and manages the Landscapes and Ecosystems Research Area. His research focus is situated at the nexus of environmental science and policy, with core expertise in land use and conservation planning. He has a particular interest in understanding values
and meanings in spatio-environmental decision-making processes, with application to biodiversity conservation, landscape governance, natural resource management and agriculture. He has led numerous projects, including the KNOBIMAP project, which aimed at understanding the values and meanings stakeholders assigned to peri-urban agricultural areas, as well as a major strategic conservation planning project for the Western Sydney area.
Dr Rebecca Cunningham
Climate change adaptation, social research
Dr Rebecca Cunningham is a social scientist working on climate change adaptation, with a particular focus on the agricultural sector. She uses social network analysis, mixed methodologies, participatory engagement and system inquiries to develop vulnerability assessments, climate adaptation plans, and heuristics for decision-making in Australian agriculture. She also uses extended reality tools to communicate climate change messages to policy makers. Dr Cunningham’s other research interests include responsible innovation and social licence to operate.
Dr Laure-Elise Ruoso
Peri-urban agriculture, qualitative research, social science
Dr Laure-Elise Ruoso is a social scientist working on peri-urban agriculture and biodiversity conservation in Australia. She uses qualitative research methods to understand the factors underpinning stakeholders’ representations of their environment, their perspective on and experience of specific issues or policies, as well as the determinants of their decision-making. She participated in the KNOBIMAP project, focusing on understanding the meaning assigned by stakeholders to peri-urban agricultural lands in the South of France. More recently, she has completed a PhD focusing on understanding the social representations underpinning conflicts around agricultural land uses in peri-urban Sydney, as well as a research project on the factors explaining landholders’ participation in biodiversity offsets in the Sydney area.
Associate Professor Dena Fam
Organics waste management, integrated and cross sectoral planning for managing waste in a circular economy
Assoc. Prof, Dena Fam is a Research Director at ISF. Her work focuses on collaborating with Australian government agencies, technology providers and local communities to manage the recovery and reuse of organic waste streams in a circular economy. She has conducted pilot projects and longitudinal research on social-cultural, regulatory and end-user perspectives on the viability of innovative organic waste management systems in practice. She has notably conducted the Organix19 project, which gathered 65 representatives across the organics waste management value chain in the Sydney basin, to collaboratively envision transition pathways and associated priority actions for meeting the goal of halving food waste by 2030 (the Federal Food Waste Strategy target) and managing urban organic waste more broadly in a circular economy, with recommendations incorporated into the National 20-year waste strategy.
Dr Laura Wynne
Urban planning, land use, sustainability governance
Dr Laura Wynne is an urban planner and sociologist working on questions related to urban planning, land use and sustainability. focused on community resistance to urban renewal. She has a particular interest in exploring contentious issues around land-use futures, including conflicts between peri-urban food production and residential development in the Sydney Basin. She has notably contributed to the Sydney's Food Futures project.
Professor Stuart White
Sustainable diets
Professor Stuart White is Director of the Institute for Sustainable Futures. He has worked in food systems phosphorus vulnerability and policy analysis, and has expertise in the role of different dietary habits and their impact on food systems.