Farida Vis (principal investigator) is a Research Fellow in the Social Sciences at the University of Sheffield. Her research focus includes social media, data journalism and citizen engagement. Work developed with Yana Manyukhina on opening up allotment data in the UK was published in The Guardian in 2011 (The English Allotment Lottery). This work eventually led to the Everyday Growing Cultures project just over a year later. Farida is a founding member of Open Data Manchester (ODM), has had an for nearly 14 years and has served on her site’s committee for ten of these, mostly looking after the waiting list. She also leads the AHRC funded project The Cultural Values of Digging (with the same co-investigators) Twitter:

Peter Jackson (co-investigator) is Professor of Geography at the University of Sheffield whose research focuses on commodity culture and the geography of consumption, including work on food commodity chains (funded through the AHRB-ESRC Cultures of Consumption programme); ‘Consumer anxiety about food’ (funded through the European Research Council); ‘Changing Families, Changing Food’ (funded through Leverhulme). Creative dissemination of these includes: ‘Food Stories’ website (hosted by the British Library) and the ‘Food Glorious Food’ exhibition at Weston Park Museum (in Sheffield) and the V&A Museum of Childhood (in Bethnal Green).

Andrew Miles (co-investigator) is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Research on Socio Cultural Change (CRESC), at the University of Manchester and convenor of the Centre’s Trajectories of Participation and Inequality research theme. He is the PI on ‘Understanding Everyday Participation’, a large project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under its Communities, Culture and Creative Economies scheme. Twitter:

Erinma Ochu (co-investigator) is a Wellcome Trust Engagement Fellow at the University of Manchester, exploring the relevance of citizen science and interactive storytelling to biomedical research. Previously Erinma managed Catalyst, an EPSRC-funded initiative at Lancaster University bringing together academics and communities to carry out transformative research on the theme of citizen-led social innovation. She also coordinated ‘Turing’s Sunflowers‘ a citizen science initiative to explore mathematical patterns in nature and to raise awareness of Alan Turing’s legacy in his centenary year. Erinma trained originally as a neuroscientist before working in the film and TV industry. Twitter:

Ian Humphrey (Research Associate) is a final year PhD candidate at the University of Sheffield (Geography department) conducting a year-long ethnographic comparison of two nascent and contrasting Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes in Wales and Yorkshire. His research seeks to interrogate the transformative potential of CSAs to effect socio-cultural and political change in the UK.

Yana Manyukhina (Research Associate) is a first year PhD student at the University of Leeds where she is conducting research into ethical food consumption. She previously worked on the Allotment Data project with Farida and was responsible for collecting the data through the use of the Freedom of Information Act. Yana blogs her PhD research on Edible Matters.

Caroline Ward (project documentary, collating toolkit, maker of great cakes) is a filmmaker and works part-time as a project manager at the BBC. She has a background in film, archives and knowledge organisation with roles at the BBC, the British Film Institute and with Brixton-based arts organisation, B3 Media. She has directed and produced several short documentaries as part of filmmaking collective, Squirrel Nation, including Cote D’Azur, which screened as part of the Cultural Olympiad. She also produced  The Sunflower Diaries, a crowdsourced short documentary as part of the Turing’s Sunflower project. She is passionate about urban food growing and writes the local and seasonal food blog, JJASONWHATSINSEASON. Twitter:

Steven Flower (Kindling Trust liaison, technical assistance Old Trafford mapping walks) has a long history of working in the field of non-profit technology. Currently this involves working with governments and organisations to assist with the publication of open data to the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI), which requires liaison around data schemas, quality and accessibility.  Alongside this, Steven works with charities and civic organisations to promote the usage and production of open data. More widely, Steven also organises Manchester Net Squared - a series of regular meetups, discussions and surgery events around a variety of topics pertinent to social-good organisations utilising technology.  Alongside this, he also co-ordinates the annual Young Rewired State event at MadLab, and sits on the Global Leadership Council of NetSquared. Twitter:

Ric Roberts (Open data release and technical assistance) is the CTO of Swirrl, a company whose aim is to make the promise of Linked Open Data a reality. Swirrl are currently concentrating on their Linked Data publishing platform, PublishMyData, and related projects. With Julian, Steven, Ben, and Farida, Ric founded OpenDataManchester. Ric is a motivated, inquisitive, experienced software developer with over 10 years in the industry. He has a passion for technology and is always striving to improve and learn. He has a broad range of software development and web application design skills, and has been responsible for the design, development and operation of several complex web-based products, both at Swirrl and in previous roles.  In particular he has expert-level knowledge on Ruby on Rails and Javascript. Ric is an active member of Manchester’s technology community. He regularly attends the North West Ruby User Group (NWRUG) meetings and has run two Ruby on Rails training courses at Manchester Digital Laboratory (MadLab), and he also co-founded Manchester Bootstrap Club. Twitter:

Everyday Growing Cultures is an EPSRC sponsored project, funded through the Communities and Cultures Network.

 

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