I work collaboratively with colleagues from different disciplines and sectors in the UK, elsewhere in Europe and the global South. Recent main areas of research have been on food ethics, food rights and security nationally and internationally; role and relevance of local food initiatives; food and nutrition in mediating inequalities in health and in measuring poverty; evaluating policy intervention at local and national level. I have explored consumer identities and perceptions of risk and trust in relation to food and new technologies, and the implications of negotiated new relationships with producers and the food system.
My recent publications, with colleagues, include: Reconnecting Consumer, Producers and Food: exploring alternatives (2008) Berg; Challenging Health Inequalties: from Acheson to 'Choosing Health' (2007) Policy Press; Welfare of Food: rights and responsibilities in a changing world (2003) Blackwellls; Poverty and Social Exclusion North and South (2003) Routledge; Poverty bites: food, health and poor families (2001) Child Poverty Action Group. I publish widely in specialized and professional journals and books, write technical briefings for non-specialists, and am a regular public speaker on nutrition and poverty, or on policy responses.
I am a Registered Public Health Nutritionist who works on the social and policy aspects of the food system. For many years I worked in the global South, primarily through the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and UN agencies; now I work more on food and nutrition policy and social problems in the North/Europe. I moved to Warwick in 2000 where I am based in the Social Policy group in the Department of Sociology; I also work with colleagues in Warwick Crop Centre and PAIS. I was a Senior Marie Curie Research Fellow at University College Dublin in early 2008, working on implementing rights based approaches to food poverty. I am a Member and Trustee of the Food Ethics Council UK, an independent charity working to make the food system fairer. I have been a mamber of several external research steering groups and government committees: e.g. for the Food Standards Agency and for Defra.
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Click on the link below to view all research projects
Caraher, M and Dowler, E (forthcoming)(2012) 'Food for Poorer People: Conventional and ?Alternative? Trangressions?'
in
Food Transgressions: Making sense of contemporary food politics,
Editors:
M Goodman and C. Sage, Ashgate
Dowler, E. A. and O'Connor, D. (forthcoming)(2011) 'Rights based approaches to addressing food poverty and food insecurity in Ireland and UK'
Social Science And Medicine
(0277-9536)
[article]
Moya Kneafsey (under review),Elizabeth Dowler, Hannah Lambie, Alex Inman, Rosemary Collier, (2011) 'Consumer perceptions of ?food security? in the United Kingdom'
Journal Of Rural Studies
(0743-0167)
Dowler, E.,Kneafsey, M., Lambie, H., Inman, A. and Collier, R., (2011) 'Thinking about ?food security?: engaging with UK consumers'
Critical Public Health
(0958-1596)
MacMillan, T. and Dowler, E.(2011) 'Secure and Sustainable? Examining the Rhetoric and Potential Realities of UK Food and Agriculture Policy'
Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics
(1187-7863)
[article]
