Category Archives: Research

Research

Meet Our Visiting Scholar: Andrea Rizo Barroso, Universitat de Barcelona

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We are delighted to welcome Andrea Rizo Barroso, a PhD candidate from the Universitat de Barcelona’s Food Action and Research Observatory (FARO), as a Visiting Scholar at RSO. Andrea’s work sits at the intersection of gender, food systems, and social inequality—an area of growing importance in contemporary food studies.

Research Focus

Andrea’s research explores how gender inequalities shape urban food environments and influence food security, particularly among vulnerable communities in Spain. Centering women’s lived experiences, her work seeks to build a critical and situated understanding of how urban food systems operate within broader structures of gender, access, and vulnerability. Her ambition is to shed light on the often-overlooked gendered dimensions of food insecurity and to contribute to more just and equitable food system transformations.

Current Work at RSO

During her stay at RSO, Andrea is focusing on advancing her paper, “Exploring Gender Dimensions in Urban Food Environments: A Systematic Scoping Review.” She is also refining the analytical framework for her PhD thesis and immersing herself in participatory methodologies such as photovoice—tools that will allow her research to more fully reflect the realities and perspectives of the women she works with.

Her work resonates strongly with collaborative initiatives like SWIFT, a project dedicated to equitable, gender-responsive food system transformation, creating rich opportunities for synergy and shared learning.

Why RSO and Wageningen?

Andrea chose RSO for its international reputation in research on power, inequality, and food systems—themes central to her own scholarly focus. The Rural Sociology Group’s commitment to equity and social justice aligns closely with her values and the communities she aims to represent in her work. Wageningen, with its vibrant academic environment, provides the ideal setting for interdisciplinary engagement and critical dialogue.

Beyond Research

Outside her academic pursuits, Andrea brings great energy and creativity to her life. She loves dancing salsa and bachata, enjoys hiking, and is always ready to explore new places through travel. Her passion for movement, nature, and discovery enriches both her personal and professional journey.

We are excited to have Andrea with us and look forward to the insights her research will bring to ongoing conversations about gender and food system transformation.

Agriculture in Rojava and the Making of a Decolonial Future

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How a grassroots revolution in northern Syria is redefining democracy, ecology, and decolonization from the ground up. An blog-post/article by Joost Jongerden and Necmettin Türk

When the Syrian civil war fractured the authority of the central state, a new kind of revolution took root in the country’s north. In the Kurdish-majority regions known as Rojava, communities seized the opportunity not to build a new state, but to build a new society based on self-administration. Much of the existing scholarship on Rojava has focused on this network of self-organized communes and regions, particularly in relation to questions of recognition, namely the development of a governance model that is inclusive of various cultural, ethnic, and religious communities. Yet far less attention has been paid to the decolonization of Rojava’s agrarian economy—a transformation that is equally fundamental to the region’s broader project of liberation.

read more here: https://theamargi.com/posts/agriculture-in-rojava-and-the-making-of-a-decolonial-future

The harm supply chain: food, agriculture and colonialism in Kurdistan[1]

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Joost Jongerden

Introduction
Food is not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about politics. Yet the political does not always present itself explicitly as political (Day 2022). This is certainly the case for food. While food is essential for the reproduction of biological life and an important cultural and economic artefact, various authors have shown it is political too. Single food products, such as sugar (Mintz 1985), palm oil (Csevár and Rugarli 2025) and soy (Hiraga 2025), have been shown to be inseparable from the histories of capitalism and colonialism. Their examples illustrate how food is entangled with broader systems of power, exploitation, and domination. Similarly, in the development of a food supply chain in Kurdistan, we see that food can both foster life and community, and foil it, serving as a vehicle for the deliberate destruction of political and socio-economic existence.        

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Field Notes: On the way

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Today, I’m on my way with a friend to visit an agroecological farm started a few years ago by a group of purged academics—scholars dismissed from their university positions during Turkey’s 2016 political crackdown. Once part of the local university, they turned to cultivating a few acres of land just outside the city. The farm still survives, though not without struggle.

As we bumped along the road toward the fields, our conversation drifted across dozens of topics—including the use of pesticides. Then suddenly, my friend turned to me and asked, “Have you heard of the ‘Black Wounds’—Birîna Reş?”

I hadn’t.

It was the early years of the Cold War. Turkey had been included in the U.S. Marshall Aid plan—not for post-war reconstruction, but for building a strategic alignment near the border with the Soviet Union. Alongside shipments of powdered milk and food came military bases. And toward the end of the 1950s, a shipment of wheat seeds treated with pesticide arrived in Turkey. The government distributed these seeds for free to landowners affiliated with the ruling party. But instead of planting them, many landowners sold the wheat cheaply on the open market. Easy money.

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Opinie: Universiteiten, jullie beperken ook zelf de academische vrijheid

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De academische vrijheid staat onder grote druk in Nederland. Een recent KNAW-rapport is niet mild: Nederland zit op een glijdende schaal en doet het steeds slechter in Europa. Omdat academische vrijheid het fundament is van een goed functionerende academische sector, is het belangrijk dat universiteitsrectoren aangeven zich zorgen te maken over de bedreiging van de academische vrijheid in Nederland en een dialoog willen starten.

Als onderdeel van deze dialoog is het echter cruciaal dat rectoren en universiteiten ook naar hun eigen praktijken kijken die academische vrijheid steeds meer beperken. Dat dit niet naar voren komt in de verklaring is meer dan een gemiste kans.

Lees het volledige artikel hier: https://www.trouw.nl/opinie/opinie-universiteiten-jullie-beperken-ook-zelf-de-academische-vrijheid~b5cbf3d5/