Gardening, growing and FOOD CULTURES
An allotmenteer and member of the Bexhill and District Garden and Allotment Society (champion jam maker, 2017; third place 2018; second place 2019).
If you're interested in everyday life, leisure spaces and community involvement, then you simply must take seriously gardening as a leisure activity. This is an area of research that I developed through teaching the GY258 Contemporary Rural Geography module at the University of Brighton. This course teaches students about the post-productivist rural environment and the transition to a leisure society. During the module we visit examples of Community Supported Agriculture in Sussex to learn about the alt-politics of food production. This is now a feature of the Social and Cultural Geography module and M Level teaching on the alternative food movement.
Gardening and growing plays an important part in my life. I'm an allotment holder and occassionally blog about the site where my family lovingly tends its crops. http://www.bopallotment.bravesites.com/
Publications include:
'The spaces and times of community farming' (with P. Liu, B. Taylor and N. Ravenscroft), Agriculture and Human Values, 2016, online first.
Nicholls, R. and Gilchrist, P. (forthcoming) ' "Glowing femininities" and "skinny privilege": digital media and the promotion of a 'clean eating' lifestyle, in Lawrence, S. (ed.) Digital Guru Media: Critical Perspectives on Internet Celebrity Culture, Social Media Influencers and Digital Life-Coaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
With colleagues at the University of Brighton (Prof Andrew Church and Prof Neil Ravenscroft), I've been researching gardening, allotment growing and Community Supported Agriculture. The videos below, which emerged from recently completed AHRC projects on community gardening give a flavour of some of the work we've been doing.
If you're interested in everyday life, leisure spaces and community involvement, then you simply must take seriously gardening as a leisure activity. This is an area of research that I developed through teaching the GY258 Contemporary Rural Geography module at the University of Brighton. This course teaches students about the post-productivist rural environment and the transition to a leisure society. During the module we visit examples of Community Supported Agriculture in Sussex to learn about the alt-politics of food production. This is now a feature of the Social and Cultural Geography module and M Level teaching on the alternative food movement.
Gardening and growing plays an important part in my life. I'm an allotment holder and occassionally blog about the site where my family lovingly tends its crops. http://www.bopallotment.bravesites.com/
Publications include:
'The spaces and times of community farming' (with P. Liu, B. Taylor and N. Ravenscroft), Agriculture and Human Values, 2016, online first.
Nicholls, R. and Gilchrist, P. (forthcoming) ' "Glowing femininities" and "skinny privilege": digital media and the promotion of a 'clean eating' lifestyle, in Lawrence, S. (ed.) Digital Guru Media: Critical Perspectives on Internet Celebrity Culture, Social Media Influencers and Digital Life-Coaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
With colleagues at the University of Brighton (Prof Andrew Church and Prof Neil Ravenscroft), I've been researching gardening, allotment growing and Community Supported Agriculture. The videos below, which emerged from recently completed AHRC projects on community gardening give a flavour of some of the work we've been doing.