Sebastian Abrahamson

Kort præsentation

Sebastian Abrahamsson has a PhD in Cultural Geography from Oxford University. After finishing his PhD he worked as a post doc at the University of Amsterdam in the Eating Bodies team between 2010-2014. Inspired by his background in human geography his research explored how eating configures the spatial and temporal work that human bodies engender as they engage with foodstuff in various ways. During his time in the team he also researched food waste, exploring how consumers tinker with food so as to avoid wasting it while paying attention to how the perishable materialities of different kinds of food limit what can be done with it. More specifically, he looked at instances where consumers resisted the boundaries (legal, social, material and economic) through which food becomes waste, and how experimenting with perishable materials by eating discarded food challenges temporal limits of organic materiality. This work laid the foundation for his current research, funded with a Marie Curie scholarship at SAXO at Copenhagen University where he is now working with a project, titled “Food Waste in Denmark and Sweden – Understanding Household Consumption Practices to Develop Sustainable Food Care”.

Interesseområder

• Cultural geography
• Science Studies
• Anthropology of the body
• Waste studies

Aktuel forskning

Food Waste in Denmark and Sweden - Understanding Household Consumption Practices to develop Sustainable Food Care

The project studies how food wasting happens, and what is done to prevent it from happening, in the Öresund region. Focusing on the role of the consumer and the practice of food consumption, the project aims at mapping and articulating 1) the ways in which techniques and technologies enable and disable wasting 2) the specific ways in which different kinds of foods, and their perishability, afford non-wasting and wasting and 3)

Generating qualitative material from interviews and using ethnographic methods, the project will elucidate differences and similarities with regard to food waste in consumers’ everyday lives in Denmark and Sweden. An important aspect here will be to move away from blaming consumers for food that is wasted, to look instead at how consumers are entangled in efforts to save food from going to waste, while at the same time having other concerns.

The project is funded by a Marie Curie Scholarship and runs from April 2016-March 2018

For more info see http://core.ku.dk/news/food-waste-in-denmark-and-sweden/