Anna Krzywoszynska | University of Oulu (original) (raw)

Journal papers by Anna Krzywoszynska

Soil Use and Management, 2019

Social learning is gaining popularity as a tool for understanding and designing interactions betw... more Social learning is gaining popularity as a tool for understanding and designing interactions between experts and farming communities to enhance the uptake of sustainable and innovative farming practices. To date the literature has mainly focused on the technical role scientists and researchers play in social learning, as sources of or co‐producers of knowledge. Social learning, however, implies a dynamic between the creation of knowledge (what can be done) and the creation of meaning (what is considered worth doing). This paper addresses this research gap by exploring the roles that ‘expert’ actors and their narratives perform in meaning‐creation. I argue that a sustainable soil management community of practice is emerging in England, and discuss the dynamics of farmer participation in this community. I further argue that members of this community use scientific ‘experts’ and narratives to inspire, justify, and legitimise sustainable soil management as a valid way of being a ‘good farmer’. This paper thus stresses the role that scientific or ‘expert’ actors and narratives play in communities of practice as contributors to meaning‐creation inherent to social learning. How soil degradation will be addressed is as much a technical question, a question of what can be done, as a question of meaning, a question of what land managers consider worthwhile doing. The scientific community thus needs to work with the farming community not only to co‐produce technical solutions, but also to co‐produce shared visions of agrarian futures which put soils at their heart.

Science, Technology and Human Values, 2018

How to embed reflexivity in public participation in techno-science, and to open it up to the agen... more How to embed reflexivity in public participation in techno-science, and to open it up to the agency of publics, are key concerns in current debates. There is a risk of engagements being limited to ‘laboratory experiments’, highly controlled and foreclosed by participation experts, particularly in upstream techno-sciences. In this paper we propose a way to open up the ‘participation laboratory’ by engaging localized, self-assembling publics in ways that respect and mobilize their ecologies of participation. Our innovative reflexive methodology introduced participatory methods to public engagement with upstream techno-science, with the public contributing to both the content and format of the project. This experience drew our attention to the largely overlooked issue of temporalities of participation, and the co-production of futures and publics in participation methodologies. We argue that many public participation methodologies are underpinned by the open futures model which imagines the future as a space of unrestrained creativity. We contrast it with the lived futures model typical of localized publics, which respects latency of materials and processes, but imposes limits on creativity. We argue that to continue being societally relevant and scientifically important, public participation methods should reconcile the open future of research with lived futures of localized publics.

This transdisciplinary research case study sought to disrupt the usual ways public participation ... more This transdisciplinary research case study sought to disrupt the usual ways public participation shapes future energy systems. An interdisciplinary group of academics and a self-assembling public of a North English town co-produced 'bottom-up' visions for a future local energy system by emphasizing local values, aspirations and desires around energy futures. The effects of participatory modelling are considered as part of a community visioning process on participants' social learning and social capital. This paper examines both the within-process dynamics related to models and the impact of the outside process, political use of the models by the participants. Both a numerical model (to explore local electricity generation and demand) and a physical scale model of the town were developed to explore various aspects of participants' visions. The case study shows that collaborative visioning of local energy systems can enhance social learning and social capital of communities. However, the effect of participatory modelling on these benefits is less clear. Tensions arise between 'inspiring' and 'empowering' role of visions. It is argued that the situatedness of the visioning processes needs to be recognized and integrated within broader aspects of governance and power relations.

The existence of a water-energy-food 'nexus' has been gaining significant attention in internatio... more The existence of a water-energy-food 'nexus' has been gaining significant attention in international natural resource policy debates in recent years. We argue the term 'nexus' can be currently seen as a buzzword: a term whose power derives from a combination of ambiguous meaning and strong normative resonance. We explore the ways in which the nexus terminology is emerging and being mobilised by different stakeholders in natural resource debates in the UK context. We suggest that in the UK the mobilisation of the nexus terminology can best be understood as symptomatic of broader global science-policy trends, including an increasing emphasis on integration as an ideal; an emphasis on technical solutions to environmental problems; achievement of efficiency gains and 'win-wins'; and a preference for technocratic forms of environmental managerialism. We identify and critique an 'integrative imaginary' underpinning much of the UK discourse around the concept of the nexus, and argue that attending to questions of power is a crucial but often underplayed aspect of proposed integration. We argue that while current efforts to institutionalise the language of the nexus as a conceptual framework for research in the UK may provide a welcome opportunity for new forms of transdisciplinary, they may risk turning nexus into a 'matter of fact' where it should remain a 'matter of concern'. In this vein, we indicate ways of building nexus research upon critique.

Sociologia Ruralis, Mar 24, 2015

This article contributes to the critical debate on the choreographies of care in farming (Law 201... more This article contributes to the critical debate on the choreographies of care in farming (Law 2010) through an exploration of the inter-dependence of care and situated expertise in the context of vine work. It argues that care as the totality of those activities which enable the maintenance, continuation, and repair of the farming ‘world’, to paraphrase Fisher and Tronto’s (1991) classic definition, depends on experiential knowledge. According to Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1986) attentiveness, responsiveness, and adaptation to the material environment are characteristic of high levels of experiential expertise. Attentiveness, responsiveness, and adaptation are also what characterises good care (Tronto 1993, Mol 2008). Through an autoethnographic account of acquiring competence in vine work, the article illustrates how through practical engagement with the material and social environment of the farm key elements of the logic of care (Mol 2008) are acquired. In conclusions, the paper indicates some consequences of putting experiential knowledge at the heart of mutlti-scalar and multi-temporal cares farmers are increasingly asked to attend to.

Agriculture and Human Values, online first

This paper engages with the question: how can the marketisation of ecologically embedded edibles ... more This paper engages with the question: how can the marketisation of ecologically embedded edibles be enabled in alternative food networks? The challenge lies in the fact that ecologically embedded edibles, grown and made through primarily ecological rather than industrial processes, and using artisan, traditional, and quality practices, show variable and uncertain characteristics. The characteristics, or qualities, of ecologically embedded edibles vary both geographically and in time, challenging the creation of stable market networks. How can ecologically embedded wines be sold when there is no certainty about their qualities? In this article I propose that certainty around qualities is not as crucial an element of transactions as some authors suggest, and I draw on the case study of ecologically embedded wines to extract wider lessons of relevance to marketisation of foods and drinks in alternative food networks. I suggest that an understanding of taste not as a fixed and unchangeable quality of people and things, but as a relational and reflexive activity between eaters and edibles, can offer a way of valuing uncertainty around product characteristics. Through a cultivation of a ‘taste for uncertainty’ consumers bodies can become enrolled in supporting artisan, quality, and traditional production through their taste buds. Some pitfalls and limitations of this approach are considered in the conclusion.

The Sociological Review, Jun 13, 2013

This paper engages in a critique of Italian and EU agricultural bio-waste policy, taking a relati... more This paper engages in a critique of Italian and EU agricultural bio-waste policy, taking a relational approach to understanding the role of these materials in socio-material networks of production. Specifically, I consider how the challenges posed by excess materials of agricultural production fit into larger concerns about rural sustainability, both social and environmental. Drawing on a number of case studies from the Italian winemaking industry, I demonstrate the legislative creation of waste from the by-products of winemaking such as grape marc and vine wood. By physically removing bio-wastes from the socio-material context of their production, the current legislation privileges capital and technologically intensive methods for the management of bio-wastes. This process results in environmental contradictions and an unequal distribution of economic and societal benefits from the utilization of these materials. What is needed, I argue, is the incorporation of excess materials into thinking about local agro-ecologies as environmentally, economically and culturally sustainable.

Area, Early View

Translation in cross-cultural research is being increasingly acknowledged as a serious methodolog... more Translation in cross-cultural research is being increasingly acknowledged as a serious methodological issue in geography. Translation dilemmas present researchers with incommensurabilities of meaning, thus providing insights into culturally specific ways of being as expressed in language. However, reflexivity around translation in the field can also highlight those moments of cultural practice where language falls short of experience. Engaging with Wittgenstein's late work on language, and with authors in the more-than-representational school of thought, I explore a personal experience of dealing with 'broken words' (Harrison 2007) in ethnographic fieldwork. Translation dilemmas, I demonstrate, may highlight not only culturally specific areas of meaning, but may also point to those areas where the local language fails to account for the fullness of culturally significant ways of being. Translation in cross-cultural research, I argue, is less about the decoding of texts, and more about coming to understand a form of life. This understanding must include practical as well as linguistic aspects. Researchers-as-translators need thus to remain sensitive to the shortcomings of local modes of communication; this sensitivity is aided by reflexivity encouraged by translating in the field.

European Urban and Regional Studies, 2014

Europe has set out its plans to foster a ‘green economy’ by 2020 focused around recycling. This p... more Europe has set out its plans to foster a ‘green economy’ by 2020 focused around recycling. This pan-European recycling economy, it is argued, will have the triple virtues of, first, stopping wastes being ‘dumped’ on poor countries; second, reusing them and thus decoupling economic prosperity from demands on global resources and, third, creating a wave of employment in recycling industries. European resource recovery is represented in academic and practitioner literatures as ‘clean and green'. Underpinned by a technical and physical materialism, it highlights the clean-up of Europe’s waste management and the high-tech character of resource recovery. Analysis shows this representation to mask the cultural and physical associations between recycling work and waste work, and thus to obscure that resource recovery is mostly ‘dirty’ work. Through an empirical analysis of three sectors of resource recovery (‘dry recyclables’, textiles and ships) in Northern member states, we show that resource recovery is a new form of dirty work, located in secondary labour markets and reliant on itinerant and migrant labour, often from accession states. We show therefore that, when wastes stay put within the EU, labour moves to process them. At the micro scale of localities and workplaces, the reluctance of local labour to work in this new sector is shown to connect with inter-generational and embodied knowledge of old manufacturing industries and a sense of spatial injustice. Alongside that the positioning of migrant workers is shown to rely on stereotypical assumptions that create a hierarchy, connecting reputational qualities of labour with the stigmas of different dirty jobs – a hierarchy upon which those workers at the apex can play.

Papers by Anna Krzywoszynska

A chapter in Bastian et. al. (2017) Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds, London: Rou... more A chapter in Bastian et. al. (2017) Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds, London: Routledge

In this chapter I suggest that the process of becoming skilled in vine work can be thought as an emergence of a new self, understood after Haraway (2008) as an open network of meaningful relations. I contribute to this debate by exploring the fruitful resonances between debates around empowerment (especially in Participatory Research), and enskillment (Ingold 2011), and I propose that empowerment can be usefully seen as a skill in and of itself. In the discussion, I explore some ways in which the affective states that enable a reconfiguring of the relational self may be used in PR practice for cultivating empowerment.

Conference Presentations by Anna Krzywoszynska

Recent work across the social sciences has done much to establish microbes as being worthy of sch... more Recent work across the social sciences has done much to establish microbes as being worthy of scholarly attention and fruitful for thinking with (Helmreich 2009, 2010; Paxson 2008; Lorimer 2016, 2017). Paxson’s (2008) ‘post-Pasteurianism’ proposition calls for recognising the microbial as more than just infection or corruption, and in more recent work Paxon and Helmreich (2014) argue that microbes have moved from figures of peril to figures of promise in a number of contexts. Hird’s (2009) micro-ontologies approach further opened up the microbial as always co-constitutive with the human. As work about and around microbes in social sciences begins to flourish, we particularly note an emerging interest in placing symbiosis and symbiogenesis at the root of human–microbe—indeed all multispecies—relations (Haraway 2016), and the normative ethics of entanglement and interdependence attached to this position (e.g. Puig de la Bellacasa 2015).
In this session we seek to broaden the scope of inquiry around human–microbe relations, and to engage with methods that enable microbes to ‘talk back’ and direct how we learn about them. In recognising the co-constitutive ways humans relate to and construct microbial life, our concern is that microbes are often over-generalised (i.e. treated as a single, coherent group) and idealised (i.e. seen as always cooperative and/or interdependent with others) across varied spaces and interactions, such that romanticised understandings of microbial life are then mobilised as utopic models for human society.
In response to these tendencies and inspired by the conference theme ‘Changing landscapes of geography’, we propose opening up the ‘microbial moment’ within and beyond current geographic thinking to ontological multiplicity and difference, understanding microbes through notions of commonality and plurality, sameness and alienness, entanglement with and distance from human life. In so doing, we look for microbes’ capacity to surprise, object, and resist us fully knowing them.
We thus invite papers that discuss, debate, theorise and tell stories of microbial multiplicity and difference. We also invite methodological explorations of how we may come (always partially) to know microbial multiplicities, and how to make them sense-able to and within human worlds.

The United Kingdom aims to decarbonize its national electricity generation in order to transition... more The United Kingdom aims to decarbonize its national electricity generation in order to transition to a low carbon economy. Solar, wind, hydro and thermal energy conversion are renewable alternatives to fossil fuels and are currently being explored that may form part of the future generation mix of the country.

How does materials scientist's work addressing energy research challenges for solar and storage (for example) translate into the adoption of new technology? How appropriate are the technology usage visions of the scientists? How can technology users better inform the materials science motivations? This report will focus on how a multidisciplinary team of researchers from the Universities of Sheffield and University of Durham, community members and industry representatives are jointly developing renewable energy projects to try to answer these and other questions. The history of the project will be presented as well as the methodology used to collaboratively engage the community participants.

Despite the growing interest of consumers in natural wines over the last few years, organic winem... more Despite the growing interest of consumers in natural wines over the last few years, organic winemakers face a number of barriers to further development. The European Union has difficulty in developing a credible regulatory environment for organic wine making with a common solution for the member states. There is confusion in existing definitions, regulations, implemented strategies and certification. Purpose: This paper aims to shed light on the poorly researched area of natural winemaking in Europe. Methodology: In this paper we distil information from existing literature and a number of original case studies with natural wine producers in France and Italy to explore organic wine consumer motivations, producer motivations, production approaches and market strategies. Findings: We suggest that 1. The EU-adopted legislative umbrella term 'organic wines' obscures a heterogeneity of products, market motivations and strategies; 2. We need new tools for thinking about and analising the organic wine sector in Europe, 3. A key element for the growth of organic winemaking is a Europe-wine valorisation of 'organic' as a mark of quality in wine.

The Enlightenment taught us to make (or at least, to claim to be making) decisions about what we ... more The Enlightenment taught us to make (or at least, to claim to be making) decisions about what we should do, now and in the future, on the basis of reliable knowledge about the past. This approach has led to the dominance of such tools as statistics, cost benefit analysis and risk assessments, which articulate our implicit belief that the past is knowable, and that this knowledge is an indication of the future. As this workshop demonstrates, we are slowly moving away from a conception of the world as fully knowable, and towards the challenge of acting responsibly in a world which does not hold still to allow for its accounting, but which is indeterminate, complex, and adaptive. In the light of this, I invite the participants of the workshop to explore three provocative questions – What is the link between knowledge and action? (How much) do we need to know in order to act? And what counts as actionable knowledge?

The term 'community' plays an increasingly important role in energy transitions policies and dis... more The term 'community' plays an increasingly important role in energy transitions policies and discourses in the United Kingdom and elsewhere. On the one hand the interpretative flexibility (Walker et al 2007) and moral weight (Mason 2000) of the term 'community' allow diverse groups to pursue their strategic interests under a shared banner. On the other, the spatial and political consequences of linking 'energy' with 'community' can be disabling rather then enabling of distributed energy schemes (Bridge et al 2013). In this paper we explore the tension between the 'process' and 'outcome' dimension of community energy schemes (Walker and Devine Wright 2008) through the case study of Stocksbridge, a town in the North of England. An analysis of the debates around the desirability and legitimacy of diverse local energy schemes shows the pulling power of 'community' as a political motivator, but also the way in which it can limit options for the exploitation of available renewable energy resources.

In this presentation we engage with the issue of participation in science and technology. We nar... more In this presentation we engage with the issue of participation in science and technology. We narrate how our project, which is concerned with the future of photovoltaic technology in society, moved from an approach we term, after Bogner (2011), ‘participation laboratory’ to a more open approach which goes beyond the controlled engagements that characterise the participation laboratory to embrace the messy reality of working with people as residents of a particular place at a particular time. we conclude that the political, historical, affective, and other influences enrich both our learning, and that of our participants. Creating an environment for knowledge to emergy from within the mixing of academic and non-academic approaches, both parties have an opportunity to ask questions about what matters in the crucial zone where laboratory meets reality, the zone in which technologies dwell.

"Scholars in agri-food and STS have begun to think of agri-foods as relationally material, acknow... more "Scholars in agri-food and STS have begun to think of agri-foods as relationally material, acknowledging the inter-corporeal dependencies they both establish and reproduce (Goodman, D. 1999, Goodman, M. 2010, Whatmore, S. 1997). The ethical questions relating to the world through the body poses to producers and consumers alike have been particularly salient. In this paper, I explore the construction of the material and ethical ‘edibility’ of agri- foods. I thus contribute to the increasingly urgent ethical and political debate about what kinds of eating habits eating well (Haraway 2007) in an inter-corporeal material world requires.

I argue that the ethical decisions about edibility and inedibility are materially linked with the heterogeneous networks of production and marketisation of agri-foods. Crucially, ‘alternative’ ways of eating can include, indeed depend on, substances which disrupt the ethical narrative constructed in abstraction of the socio-material realities of production. Drawing on my ethnographic research in Italy, I explore the case of sulphur dioxide (SO2), and its material and ethical role in the marketisation (Callon et al 1998) of organic wines. I demonstrate how organic wine markets are constantly threatened by the ethical weight of SO2, while simultaneously depending on it for the marketisation of their products. I further explore what kinds of ideal consumer bodies are cultivated when SO2 is excluded, and the problems of indeterminacy in marketising lively ‘natural’ wines. Eating well, I show, is more than an abstract act of will. Cultivating ethical ways of eating has to address the issue of dangerous inter-corporeality."

Reports by Anna Krzywoszynska

This report briefly describes the appropriateness of the 'nexus' approaches to natural resource m... more This report briefly describes the appropriateness of the 'nexus' approaches to natural resource management activities at Defra. It suggests areas where furthering cross-domain dialogue and action may be beneficial, and describes some shortcomings of the 'nexus' in the policy environment.

Book reviews by Anna Krzywoszynska

In a world where nearly one billion people are undernourished and hungry (FAO, 2010), and where u... more In a world where nearly one billion people are undernourished and hungry (FAO, 2010), and where unique natural habitats are being destroyed to make space for growing crops, up to half of the food we make globally is wasted. Stuart's important book goes some way towards exploring the reasons behind this absurd situation, but leaves many important assumptions about change is social practice unexplored.

Soil Use and Management, 2019

Science, Technology and Human Values, 2018

Sociologia Ruralis, Mar 24, 2015

Agriculture and Human Values, online first

The Sociological Review, Jun 13, 2013

Area, Early View

European Urban and Regional Studies, 2014

Affect and Artificial Intelligence, Elizabeth A. Wilson. University of Washington Press, Seattle ... more Affect and Artificial Intelligence, Elizabeth A. Wilson. University of Washington Press, Seattle and London (2010)., Women are ruled by emotions, therefore irrational. Men are in control of their emotions, therefore rational. Perhaps it was weariness at the persistence of this incarnation of the modernist split between mind and body, and rationality and affect, which was at the root of the newest book by the feminist scholar and a professor in the Department of Women's studies at Emory University, Elizabeth A. Wilson. In her 'Affect and Artificial Intelligence', Wilson challenges the intelligence/emotion opposition in a novel way, taking as her object of study the ultimate non-emotional, disembodied mind, a computer, or rather, an artificial intelligence. In her subversive reading of psycho-biographical and archival data, Wilson argues that emotions are not only central to the emergence of 'thinking computers', but that emotional capacity can be a key element of machine intelligence.

Anthropology of Food, Dec 19, 2012

Material powers: cultural studies, history and the material turn, edited by Tony Bennett and Patr... more Material powers: cultural studies, history and the material turn, edited by Tony Bennett and Patrick Joyce. Routledge, London, 2010, 214 pp., ISBN 9780415603140, CAN$55.95 (pbk).

Agriculture and Human Values

Agriculture and Human Values, Jul 17, 2015

This book, written by two experienced and respected experts in stakeholder participation, left me... more This book, written by two experienced and respected experts in stakeholder participation, left me with mixed feelings. On one level, the book presents a potentially useful new participatory methodology called Triple Task (TT) which is an attempt by the authors to help themselves and others to understand, in the first instance (TT Mode 1) ‘how participation happens, what works and what does not work, and how to improve the ability of participation to make things flow’ (p. 10), and in the second instance (TT Mode 2) to ‘help groups explore their current situation and (…) improve their functioning and ultimately make a positive contribution to the lives of others’ (p. 4). In itself TT may offer additional analytical and research insights. However, the authors situate their efforts as a contribution to saving ‘the Human Project’; never clearly defined, the term seems to refer to the entirety of human activity across history and into the future. Overall there is a number of deeply problematic assumptions the authors make to position participation, and Triple Task, as the saving graces of human survival.

Carolan’s central argument is that “Global Food (…), through the embodiments it creates, helps fo... more Carolan’s central argument is that “Global Food (…), through the embodiments it creates, helps foster particular knowledges, tastes, and feelings about food [which] give support to conventional food production and consumption” (p. 7). Carolan’s approach is critical: if the eating/growing bodies are as much a part of Global Food as are oil subsidies and potash mines, a “better” food system would have to engage seriously with the issues embodiment poses.

PhD thesis. This thesis explores the role of living and non-living materials as active agents in... more PhD thesis.
This thesis explores the role of living and non-living materials as active agents in the processes of making and marketising organic wines in Northern Italy. It is concerned with the ways in which the tension between human intentionality and material agency is managed and worked with in this high-risk and ethically charged context. By applying theoretical insights of actor-network and post-humanist theories to the field of agri-food production, this thesis proposes novel ways of understanding markets, ethics, and skill in the context of organic wine, and of agri-food more generally.
The thesis traces and analyses the effects of materials key to the production and marketisation of organic wines: vines, yeast, and sulphur dioxide. A multi-sited, participant observation ethnography approach is used to follow these materials, and the practices in which they are implicated, at a number of wineries in Northern Italy. Two dominant modes of ordering (Law 1994) of organic winemaking practices and discourses are identified: pacification, and making spaces for nature. It is shown that the constant tension between these two modes of ordering expresses the ongoing negotiation of acceptable levels of indeterminacy (and so the acceptable limits of ‘naturalness’) in organic wine production and sales.
This thesis makes a significant contribution to current debates in post-humanist and agri-food literature. It extends the existing empirical focus of post-humanist research to spaces of high-risk human-nonhuman interactions. It proposes a move beyond conceptualising agri-food ‘natures’ as economically or ethically passive, and towards relational understandings of both markets and ethics of agri-foods. It demonstrates that the times and spaces of agri-food production, and those of agri-food markets and ethics, are linked through the materialities of practice and product. This thesis thus calls for a materialist politics approach to agri-food production.

I am a qualitative researcher with a background in Geography, and Science and Technology Studies.... more I am a qualitative researcher with a background in Geography, and Science and Technology Studies. I am interested in how humans build meaningful relationships with the natural world, and in the inter-action between scientific and other forms of knowledge, identity, and ethics in the forming of these relationships. My current Leverhulme Trust funded research explores these issues with regards to the changing ethics and practices of soil research and management in England. My previous research explored a range of issues associated with food production and consumption, renewable energy, and waste and sustainability. I have a long track record of interdisciplinary work, and I am interested in the role public-academic engagement can play in addressing social and environmental challenges.

When I started my project on the changing attitudes to soils in the UK conventional farming commu... more When I started my project on the changing attitudes to soils in the UK conventional farming community eighteen months ago, I bought myself a pair of sturdy and sensible wellies. I foresaw a lot of time spent in muddy fields and at fringe farming events. I never thought I would be standing at the terrace of Westminster Palace, looking over a teacup of fine bone china at Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as he proclaims that soils are the UK's most valuable resource.

We are back to square one with regards to a European organic wine certification. While it was hop... more We are back to square one with regards to a European organic wine certification. While it was hoped that this year organic winemakers will be able to label their wines organic, the negotiations over the acceptable levels of sulphur dioxide (SO2) use fell through, and the draft legislation was withdrawn. The reason behind it is the EU Commissions insistence on enforcing the same SO2 reduction (50 mg/l vs current country-specific limits) across all wine-producing countries, in spite of continuous resistance from the northern-most producers.

It is impossible to talk to organic winemakers without breaching the subject of sulfur dioxide. E... more It is impossible to talk to organic winemakers without breaching the subject of sulfur dioxide. Each winemaker has their own opinion, theory and practice. How sulfur dioxide can be limited depends on the wine type, the company set-up and many other factors. In turn, making low-sulfite wines will influence production and sales, meaning the whole company has to adapt to its chosen policy. Producing low-sulfite wines is not a case of doing less, but of doing much, much more. Here are three winemakers, with three different stories, I spoke with while doing my research in Italy.

Dla jednych to moda, dla innych sens życia. Wina organiczne stają się coraz bardziej popularne, a... more Dla jednych to moda, dla innych sens życia. Wina organiczne stają się coraz bardziej popularne, ale nawet eksperci nie są w stanie dokładnie zdefiniować, czym właściwie są. Każdy z producentów realizuje własną wizję, a rynek weryfikuje ich starania.

As academics, we are encouraged by our universities and the funding bodies to ‘engage with policy... more As academics, we are encouraged by our universities and the funding bodies to ‘engage with policymakers’ to achieve real world impact from our research. But ‘how’ and ‘when’ and indeed ‘whether’ to engage policymakers at all, are questions too often left unasked. I recently spent time in Defra as the Nexus Network Fellow, gaining insights into Defra’s organisational and power structures. I have been reflecting on these experiences and thinking more broadly about the best ways to direct our efforts with policy makers. I ran a session at the Nexus Network Annual Conference on 19 November 2015, where I reflected on these issues with other colleagues.

Critical Zones: The Science and Politics of Landing on Earth, 2020

My role, as I see it in this time of brewing conflict, is to keep open the quest... more My role, as I see it in this time of brewing conflict, is to keep open the question of where soil ends and other things begin. To speak for soil as connected, made by and for more than one entity or process. To enable people to speak to one another and not over one another as we try to find our feet on this shifting ground. To condemn the destroyers and to praise the heroes of soil, those who act for soil without certain-ty, but with dedication. They understand that to care is to always be provisional, partial, and evolving. To try and try again, without certainty, and with openness; to try and connect.