Category Archives: Research

Research

Taxing tradition in Istria, Croatia

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Robin Smith

On its face, taxation is not the most alluring subject for those of us studying rural farming communities. However, taxation touches much of what we care about in these spaces. Taxation fundamentally shapes the economic structure of rural areas, influencing the viability of family businesses and the ability of rural entrepreneurs to establish themselves in the formal economy. Taxes can make and unmake markets, sometimes in dramatic fashion.

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Convivial writing experiences – Insights from the Polička Collective

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While many departments, research institutes and universities offer a fertile ground for intellectual collaboration and mutual support structures, like-minded scholars also happen to work outside these formal frames, often hundreds, if not thousands, of kilometers away. In this blog post, we reflect upon how a group of ten scholars writing joint articles based on individual research became what we currently call the emerging Polička Collective: a spatially dispersed and interdisciplinary alliance of scholars interested in diverse and community economies in Eastern and Central Europe (CEE) and the Former Soviet Union.

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SERIGO kicks off to enhance social inclusion in rural areas

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Brussels, 29 April 2024. The SERIGO project kicked off to promote social innovation as a means to enhance social inclusion within rural communities. The project is coordinated by the University of Eastern Finland and brings together 17 partner organisations from 11 different EU countries.

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Publication | Understanding the emerging phenomenon of food forestry in the Netherlands: An assemblage theory approach

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Anna Roodhof picking fruit in the Paradijsvogelbosje (Almere)

By Anna Roodhof – Food forestry is an advanced type of agroforestry where practitioners design a forest ecosystem that incorporates edible and otherwise serviceable perennial plant species. In the Netherlands, food forests have become an increasingly popular land-use form, inspired by Martin Crawford’s forest garden. The first occurrence of the term ‘food forest’ dates back to 2009, when Wouter van Eck and Pieter Jansen started a forest garden sized 3 hectares, which they aptly renamed ‘food forest’. Since then, and especially from 2017 onwards, this innovative approach to agroforestry has flourished across the country. As a PhD candidate at the Rural Sociology Group at Wageningen University and Research, I study this emerging phenomenon.

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Working for the Occupier

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In the Master thesis “Working for the occupier: Palestinian youths navigating the colonial settlement”, Davide Fabris investigates how young Palestinians make it through the daily challenges and precarity of working in a Israeli settlement. The main research question of his research is: ”How are young Palestinians experiencing and dealing with labour incorporation within the Israeli settlements’ economy?”.

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