Thesis Opportunity with Rural Sociology: What is inclusive when it comes to policy?

Proposed title: Inclusive approaches to policy making: Making sense of options for food policy

Key words: policy, inclusivity, civil society, multi-actor, stakeholder, co-production

Context:  There have been increasing calls for more participation in policy making to allow for more inclusive policies. But what does this look like in practice? What models have been developed and tried? What has worked and what hasn’t? What are the implications of trying to be more inclusive. And, what does inclusivity even mean in a policy making context? The goal of this thesis is to start to answer these pressing questions and to related them to food policy.

Objective: The goal of this research is to identify and understand strategies for including people and their lived experiences, into policy making processes.

In this thesis, you will:

• Undertake a literature review into inclusive governance (theory and practice)
• Identify examples of inclusive governance from a broad range of sectors
• Create a database of examples
• Select an appropriate number of case studies to examine in greater depth
• Collect data (including via interviews) to support description and analysis

On the basis of this, you will be expected to deliver concrete outputs.

Outputs:

• Develop a clear research proposal building on a structured literature review and outlining clear methods for undertaking the research
• Collect relevant literature and empirical cases to support the answering of the research question.
• MSc thesis conforming to the criteria and quality indicators of the Rural Sociology Group.

Start date:  February or March 2018

Qualifications:

• You are registered in one of the following MSc programmes:

MID, MHS, MOA or MFQ

• You have an interest in participatory policy making, civil society, food security and food sovereignty
• You have some knowledge about theories of change
• You have completed at least 2 RSO courses (or relevant social science courses)

Supervisor: Dr Jessica Duncan (RSO)

If you are interested, please email Jessica Duncan (jessica.duncan@wur.nl ) with a short letter of motivation.