Position:
Marie Curie Research Fellow
Email:
Telephone:
+44 (0)29 208 75300
Location:
Room -1.06, Glamorgan Building
Leah Ashe
Leah M. Ashe, a Marie Curie Research Fellow in the PUREFOOD Network on sustainable peri-urban food systems, is based at Cardiff University completing a Ph.D. under the supervision of Dr. Kevin Morgan. Her work investigates the discourse and practice of new city-led efforts to promote food and nutrition security in the midst of a ‘New Food Equation’, and she is particularly interested in themes related to urban food systems, an expanded conceptualization of food and nutrition security, and North-South convergence. Leah holds a joint Master in the History and Culture of Food from the Universities of Bologna (Italy), Barcelona (Spain), and Tours (France), and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (summa cum laude) from the University of Notre Dame (USA). She looks forward to a career that integrates research, practice, and service, and invites contacts and collaborations (lashend@gmail.com).
Qualifications
UNIVERSITÀ DI BOLOGNA (2008-2010) (Italy / Spain / France)
Master in History and Culture of Food (110/110 e lode, 2010).
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME (1997-2001) (USA)
Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering (Summa Cum Laude, 2001).
Career Profile
ASHE LANGUAGE SERVICES: FREE-LANCE TRANSLATION, EDITING & LANGUAGE CONSULTANCY, Services in English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Catalan (2008-2011).
MOOG AIRCRAFT GROUP, Associate Product Engineer (2004-2007).
UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME, OFFICE OF UNDERGRADUATE ADMISSIONS, Admissions Counselor(2001-2003).
Awards and Prizes
Marie Curie PUREFOOD Fellow (2011-present).
Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar (2008-2009).
Academic All-America (Rowing-Engineering 2001).
Notre Dame Scholar, (1997-2001).
Memberships / External Activities
Rotary Foundation Alumni Association
Presentations
Ashe, Leah M. Adding the R: New York City School Food and the Mobilizing Food Movement.AESOP Food Studies Group International Conference. Paper presentation. Cardiff, UK, 2011.
Ashe, Leah M. Visiones de salud entre inmigrantes latinos y catalanes en Barcelona. International Commission on the Anthropology of Food Conference ‘Antropología de Alimentación, Nutrición y Salud’. Poster presentation, Bilbao, Spain, 2010.
X Jornadas de doctorado e investigación del Observatorio de la Alimentación, 2010, Barcelona, Spain (Presentation of Research: “Cambiando estructuras de comidas familiares y visiones de dieta y salud”).
Additional Information
Languages: English (native language); Spanish (fluent/C2); Italian (fluent/C2); French(competent/B2-C1); Catalan (comprehension); Portuguese (comprehension).
Referee for the journals Anthropology of Food Public Health Nutrition.
‘Planning for a new food security: cities, states, and a new global nutrition project’.
In light of a New Food Equation marked by increasingly precarious food security and a rising importance of cities, new approaches to address food security at urban scales offer promising prospects. But as these efforts are novel – indeed, integrating a decidedly new food equation – they are also little studied and poorly understood. This research examines two large cities of the North and South, New York City and Bogotá, and aims to understand how each municipality frames its understanding of food security (generally), how its policies and practices reflect this framing, and to what extent discourse accords practice. The project is poised to contribute to practical efforts to assure food security as well as to contribute to both emerging and ongoing academic debates in the food security, development and urban food systems literatures.
The project is funded by PUREFOOD (Grant Agreement Number 264719), a Marie Curie Initial Training Network funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework PEOPLE program. The objective of PUREFOOD is to train a pool of early-stage researchers in the socio-economic and socio-spatial dynamics of the (peri-)urban and regional foodscape. Specifically, the projects will focus on three key aspects of the so-called new food geography: sustainable food supply chains, public sector food procurement practices and (peri-)urban food strategies.
Ashe, Leah M. & Sonnino, Roberta. (2012) ‘At the crossroads: New paradigms of food security, public health nutrition and school food’. Public Health Nutrition. Available on CJO 2012 doi:10.1017/S1368980012004326.
Leah M. Ashe & Roberta Sonnino (2012): Convergence in Diversity: New York City School Food and the Future of the Food Movement, International Planning Studies, DOI:10.1080/13563475.2013.750937.
Sonnino R., Spayde J. & Ashe L. (Forthcoming) Public policies and the construction of markets: Insights from school food initiatives. In: Conterato M., Schneider S., Marques F., editors. Construction of markets for family farming: Challenges for rural development. Porto Alegre: UFRGS Editora.