Mette Weinreich Hansen

Short presentation

My research and teaching takes departure in food production, food processing and food consumption in an interdisciplinary Food Studies perspective. For many years, I have been working with alternative food networks and the value aspects of the organic food production and processing in an organizational perspective.

Some of my recent research interests and activities are in the area of public food systems (mainly schools but also prisons, nursing homes, kindergartens etc.) as well as collaboration between knowledge institutions and enterprises or organizations in order to strengthen knowledge bridging. Another main research interest is new emerging food networks around the bigger cities strengthening rural-urban relations.

The theoretical and methodological research interest has been concentrated on keeping an interdisciplinary view on the complexity of food networks. My research has mainly been studies involving a range of qualitative and ethnographic methods but with the materiality in food as the focus. This approach challenges the traditional division of food in food-technology and food-sociology. By integrating the materiality and the cultural aspects of food in the research approach new insights emerges. The food networks as socio-material enactments of reality also underlines my interest in analyzing and capture complexity in relation to food systems. The Science, Technology Society (STS) approach has been the theoretical basis for working with new material and interdisciplinary research and teaching.

I teach and supervise several courses in the M(Sc.) in Integrated Food Studies - a program that emphasizes the complexity of food systems and the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration in order to be able to take action to change the current food system challenges.