Jointly with Theano Moussouri, Professor of Museum Studies at UCL, and Joseph Cook, lead of UCL’s Citizen Science Academy, I am leading a research project in 2025 which examines the role of migrant food knowledges in the UK’s move to climate adaptation and food justice.

We will be working with three wonderful partner institutions to connect with different migrant groups in London and Scotland and learn from their food and growing practices:

- With London Museum, we will be tracing migrant food histories and contributions to the city. The museum is currently relocating to Smithfield Market, itself a site of thousands of years of food heritage, and has a longstanding interest in how London Eats.

- With Royal Botanical Gardens Edinburgh, we will be growing  food crops not traditionally grown in the UK and testing their climate-resilience to local conditions.

- With Nourish Scotland we will be considering international models of public kitchens and subsidised canteens to feed into the co-design of Public Diners to be rolled out across Scotland. (This links up with my longer-term interest in food as a Universal Public Service.)

Together, these activities will allow us to understand more about the valuable contributions migrant knowledges make to food diversity, resilience and adaptation, but also about the role of public institutions in collecting intangible heritage, especially from marginalised groups.

Funded by UCL Grand Challenges.

Since 2024, we have been building on work by the food charity on the abysmal food provision in London asylum hostels. The project pilots a key recommendation from a recent report outlining innovative actions local authorities can take to tackle this crisis – communal kitchens.

Jointly with asylum seekers living in hostels in Camden (Central London) as well as long-term residents we will re-design of the community café at Somers Town Community Association. The design process will be overseen by leading architect Madeleine Kessler, Co-curator of the British Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2021.

After its inauguration during Refugee Week 2025, the kitchen will run regular sessions for asylum seekers, facilitated by Feast With Us.

Funded by Camden Council’s Food Mission, Bartlett Policy Support Fund, and William Kessler Charitable Trust.

The exhibition Municipal Kitchens, held at the Berlin gallery nGbK in summer 2024, brought together works from a range of international artists and collectives — all asking: what would it mean to de-domesticate the kitchen and make food a public service in cities?

Co-curated with Johann Arens, Alicja Rogalska, Cherry Truluck and Miriam Lowack, the show included an extensive event programme organised with local Berlin food activists. A number of public meals brought new publics into the art space (a former McDonald’s) and excursions sought to bring the gallery out into the city.

A forthcoming publication will bundle the debates and visions put forward and highlight the role of art in imagining alternative food futures.

Funded by neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst.

Together with installation artist Johann Arens, I have been running the collaborative creative/research practice Another Provision since early 2021. Our initial work was concerned with food as an urban metabolic circulation around which support infrastructures have been established. We collaborated extensively with the National Food Service jointly running a series of participatory design and writing, and food organising workshops, often with other food and activist groups like Refugee Community Kitchen.

Watch a panel discussion on Food as Commons, organised as part of the London Festival of Ideas in 2021, here.

Funded by the Trellis programme and UCL East.

My institute recently launched the UCL Citizen Science Academy, which offers training in research methods and ethics for people without a formal higher education background. In 2023, I am working with experienced Citizen Scientists as well as food policy experts and local authorities to co-design a special course on Community-Based Food Research.

Funded by the Bartlett Innovation Fund.