GSD Assistant Professor Marco J Haenssgen is part of a research group that has won a £249,000 award to study how people navigate their social and physical food environments in Thailand and Laos.

The study makes use of innovative measurement approaches using accelerometers and GPS trackers to understand forms of exclusion and marginalisation in local food spaces. While highlighting inequalities of access within a community through this approach, the project will also link these patterns of exclusion to the observed dietary patterns of households. This is particularly relevant in fragile settings where access constraints are persistent.

Principal Investigator Professor Chittur Srinivasan from Reading University adds that, “the relevance of activity spaces in explaining interactions of households with the external food environment has been dramatically highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic through the imposition of restrictions on activity spaces.”