Core Team
Professor Emma Roe, Project lead, University of Southampton
Emma Roe is Professor in More-Than-Human Geographies at the University of Southampton and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. She is the Principal Investigator of TRI-SoMe Chicken – a project that unites various threads of her research interests over her to-date 25-year long career. These interests include breaking down the dichotomy between food production and consumption studies through innovating the concept of things becoming food; the social science of farm animal welfare and food animal supply chains; infection prevention practices for tackling Anti-Microbial Resistance and Infectious Diseases; embodied, lived experiences of food transitions; animal care practices and ethical principles in the spaces of meat, poultry, dairy and animal research industries. She builds, and flourishes within, interdisciplinary research teams; always appreciating the benefits of collaborating with stakeholders of all stripes about what research questions need answering, and how to do the research, as she acknowledges the partiality of her own expertise.
Justin Sheffield is a Professor of Hydrology and Remote Sensing at the University of Southampton, UK, and Head of the School of Geography and Environmental Science. He holds a BSc in Mathematics with Oceanography, an MSc in Engineering Mathematics, and a PhD in Hydro-climatology. His research focuses on large-scale hydrology, climate variability, and hydrological extremes, with applications to natural hazards, water, and food security, especially in developing regions. Sheffield has published widely on climate change and hydrological processes, including monitoring and prediction systems. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (2014) and the Plinius Medal (2013) for multidisciplinary research in hydrological hazards. In 2019, he was named the Robert E. Horton Lecturer in Hydrology for his work on drought monitoring and the development of tools to aid food-insecure countries.
Paul Hurley, Project co-lead, University of Southampton
Paul Hurley is a transdisciplinary artist-researcher specializing in qualitative, participatory, and artistic research, as well as public engagement projects. His work bridges Performance and Participatory Art, More-than-human Geography, and diverse fields including Agriculture, Theology, Biology, Veterinary Science, and Engineering. Since 2022, Paul has collaborated with the Centre for Higher Education Practice at the University of Southampton, developing researcher development programs. His research focuses on relational practices, identities, and cultural knowledge, exploring topics like Agri-environment policy, farmed animal welfare, infection prevention, meat-eating masculinities, and antimicrobial resistance in the food chain. For Paul, research, public engagement, and participatory art are spaces of potential for exploring ideas and issues. Since 2003, he has produced numerous exhibitions, performances, films, videos, books, academic presentations, and publications, contributing to international discussions on these subjects.
Christina Vogel is the Director of the Centre for Food Policy, Professor of Food Policy, and a registered nutritionist. Her research focuses on developing, implementing, and evaluating food policies to improve population health, reduce inequalities, and protect the planet. Using a food systems approach, her work explores the wider determinants of diet, with a strong emphasis on community participation and public voices to ensure policies are fair, sustainable, and resilient. Christina leads several major research grants from organizations such as the NIHR and Wellcome Trust. Current projects include product placement trials, evaluations of UK food regulations, and investigations into the convenience store sector. Her research has influenced local, national, and international policies, including reports from the House of Lords, the WHO European Region, and local authority plans. Christina is also Deputy Editor of the scientific journal Public Health Nutrition, and her work has received significant media attention.
Dr Sarah Lambton, Project co-lead, University of Bristol
Sarah Lambton is a Senior Lecturer in Animal Welfare and Innovation at the University of Bristol. She has been conducting research in the field of poultry welfare for more than twenty years. Her interests centre around the development of welfare problems on farm, and how they can be prevented from developing. Sarah is also interested in the development of welfare assessment methods, most recently using automated monitoring technology in broiler chickens. She is particularly interested in incorporating animal welfare as an integral part of the discussion around the sustainability and resilience of the poultry industry.
Professor Damian Maye, Project co-lead, University of Gloucestershire
Damian Maye is Professor of Agri-Food Studies at the University of Gloucestershire. His research focuses on agri-food sustainability and food system governance, using mostly qualitative research methods. Much of Damian's work involves working closely with farmers and other food system actors to address tricky resilience and sustainability questions, often as part of larger interdisciplinary teams. Damian is a food and rural geographer by training. He has recently co-edited a major Encyclopedia of Food and Society for Edward Elgar. He also co-edits the Journal of Rural Studies and is Chair of the RGS-IBG Food Geographies Research Group.
Dominic Watters, Research and Innovation Associate, University of Southampton
Dominic Watters comes from the most deprived blocks of his council estate. He has used his experience of the daily realities of poverty to help inform discussions about fuel and food insecurity in the UK. After many requests to speak about his lived experience, Dominic developed the concept of “living experience” (Watters, D. p5 2021) to stress the urgency and tensions of the inequalities faced by so many. Through his campaign and now CIC, Food is Care, Dominic identified gaps in social work frameworks and worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the professions’ shortcomings towards the most disadvantaged in society. His impactful appearances on BBC Newsnight, Sky News, the New Statesman, and Dutch national 6 o’clock news, NOS to name a few, have shown him to use every platform he can access to speak up for the marginalised and often unheard. After giving evidence to the House of Lords, Food, Diet and Obesity Select Committee live on Parliament TV, Dominic’s words are heavily quoted in the resulting Recipe for Health: How to Fix Our Broken Food System report (2024-25). Now widely regarded as a voice of poverty, Dominic found a new home at the University of Southampton where he is writing his PhD, whilst also working as a community-based researcher on a project, funded by UKRI / DEFRA, looking at the role of chicken in building UK food system resilience.
Project Staff and Partners
Philippa Simmonds, Research Development Associate, Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire
Pippa Simmonds is a post-doctoral researcher who will be joining the TRISoMe Chicken team in February 2025. Her current research includes projects addressing climate discourses in the ruminant livestock sector, power relations in agricultural soil carbon markets, and the use of participatory deliberative processes to enhance local climate action. She has a background in clinical medicine and global health and has previously worked with the WHO European Office on risk factors for noncommunicable disease.
Dr Theo Stanley, Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, University of Southampton
Theo Stanley is an environmental and cultural geographer whose research examines the relationship between science, technology and environmental justice. He is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Southampton, researching food system resilience in the UK poultry industry. He recently completed his PhD at the University of Oxford, which investigated how natural capital schemes affect nature restoration in the Scottish Highlands. For the TRISoMe project, he is excited to better understand the links between chicken production, consumption and environmental issues, and to work closely with a range of stakeholders to improve the chicken industry’s contribution to public and planetary health.
Laura Higham, Veterinary Consultant, FAI Farms
Laura Higham is a veterinary consultant in sustainable agriculture at FAI, working alongside food businesses to drive sustainability in animal-based supply chains with a focus on animal welfare and antimicrobial stewardship. Laura has a varied veterinary background, having worked in practice in the UK and New Zealand, and subsequently in the international NGO sector delivering programmes to support working animal welfare. She is currently finalising a PhD at The Global Academy for Agriculture and Food Systems at Edinburgh University, which explores means of integrating animal welfare and antimicrobial stewardship into the sustainability agenda. This includes utilising multi-criteria decision tools to create evaluations of sustainability that balance economic, ethical, and environmental objectives in agricultural contexts. She also holds an MSc in international animal health and is the founder and a director of social enterprise Vet Sustain, championing sustainability in the veterinary professions.
Sam Church, Illustrator, Writer and live visual recorder
Sam Church is an illustrator, writer and live visual recorder, specialising in getting to the heart of complex information and displaying it back as an engaging, easy to understand story. He's not an expert in anything but is inquisitive about everything and it usually pays off. Recent work includes writing and illustrating a children’s history guide for St Paul’s Cathedral, and an explainer video about health testing in South Wales.
Dr Kathryn Ashill - Artist, Barry Island, South Wales
My practice-as-research has centred around and the key points that have arisen from current discourse around the co-working non-human animal and human animal relationship. By weaving together case studies on animals that perform roles in biotherapies, theatre, visual art and the military, my research has resulted in a series of performance art works involving the different species working for human health.
My research also explores the potential for interspecies climate justice and working together through climate crisis.
For the TRI soMe Chicken project my focus will be the use of chicken in meal preperation, and interspecies caregiving through the life cycle of the broiler chicken.
Within my artwork performance, video and installation present my personal experiences lived working class identity. The culture clash between my background and my artistic practice sits in the disjointed narratives within my work. I pursue the theatricality in the everyday whilst sharing fragments of autobiography, observations on people, history and site.
For more information about the project and our upcoming events, please contact [email protected] or [email protected] .
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