Charlotte Spring
Postdoctoral Fellow, Voicing Change: Co-Creating Knowledge and Capacity for Sustainable Food Systems and in collaboration with Ka'a'gee Tu First Nation, Kakisa, NWT
Core Interests / Areas of Expertise
- Food justice
- Surplus food redistribution
- Ethnography
- Scholar-activism
I received my PhD in Human Geography in 2018 (University of Salford, Manchester, UK), following undergraduate studies in Social Anthropology (University of Cambridge, 2004-7) and masters studies in Sustainable Development Advocacy (University of Worcester, 2013-4). I undertook postdoctoral studies at the University of Sheffield from 2018-2019 and the University of Calgary from 2020-2021 before joining Laurier.
Community-based and action-oriented research has been a key motivation of my academic work. I am currently working as part of Laurier’s longstanding partnership with Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation, exploring how research can support ongoing work to build food sovereignty against climate disruptions and colonial legacies in the NWT through locally-controlled infrastructure and culturally-appropriate reporting metrics. I also work with colleagues in Kenya and Brazil on a project called Voicing Change, which seeks to harness podcasting as a tool to empower communities to share their knowledge and struggles towards fairer food systems. I co-produce a podcast, Rights Not Charity, on behalf of the Global Solidarity Alliance for Food, Health and Social Justice, a network of activists and researchers seeking a future without the need for corporate food banking.
Papargyropoulou, E., Fearnyough, K., Spring, C., & Antal, L. (2022). The future of surplus food redistribution in the UK: Reimagining a ‘win-win’ scenario. Food Policy, 108(102230), 1–13.
Spring, C. A., & Biddulph, R. (2020). Capturing Waste or Capturing Innovation? Comparing Self-Organising Potentials of Surplus Food Redistribution Initiatives to Prevent Food Waste. Sustainability, 12(4252), 1–19.
Spring, C. (2020, November). How foodbanks went global. New Internationalist.
Spring, C., Soma, T., Lazell, J., & Reynolds, C. (2020). Food waste: An introduction to contemporary food waste studies. In C. Reynolds, T. Soma, C. Spring, & J. Lazell (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Food Waste (pp. 1–21). Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
Spring, C., Adams, M., & Hardman, M. (2019). Sites of learning: Exploring political ecologies and visceral pedagogies of surplus food redistribution in the UK. Policy Futures in Education, 17(7), 844–861.
Spring, C. A., & Biddulph, R. (2020). Capturing Waste or Capturing Innovation? Comparing Self-Organising Potentials of Surplus Food Redistribution Initiatives to Prevent Food Waste. Sustainability, 12(4252), 1–19.
Spring, C. (2020, November). How foodbanks went global. New Internationalist.
Spring, C., Soma, T., Lazell, J., & Reynolds, C. (2020). Food waste: An introduction to contemporary food waste studies. In C. Reynolds, T. Soma, C. Spring, & J. Lazell (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Food Waste (pp. 1–21). Abingdon, New York: Routledge.
Spring, C., Adams, M., & Hardman, M. (2019). Sites of learning: Exploring political ecologies and visceral pedagogies of surplus food redistribution in the UK. Policy Futures in Education, 17(7), 844–861.