CRPR Seminar - Francesca Vaghi – University of Glasgow

What happens at the intersection of food, public health, education, and family intervention policies? Within all these domains, the first years of children’s lives are considered some of the most important. In institutional settings, emphasis is placed on teaching children how to make ‘good’ choices in relation to food, and in the sphere of family, parents still tend to be considered solely responsible for their children’s diets: both these approaches advance positivist and individualistic assumptions about food and eating, that tend to disregard the impact of inequalities, and the social value of food. Based on ethnographic research conducted in inner-London, this talk thus begins by examining policy discourses relating to children’s food in the early years, followed by an exploration of adults’ and children’s practices in a nursery setting. By evidencing the disconnect between the universalism of policy and the particularism that feeding and eating in the early years requires, the talk ends by asking what might happen if more attention is paid to how food is eaten, as children do, rather than what is eaten.

Biography

Francesca Vaghi is a Research Associate at the School of Social & Political Science. With Professor Ellen Stewart, she conducts research on the work of contemporary NHS charities as part of the Border Crossings project: https://more.bham.ac.uk/border-crossings/border-crossings/projects/

She completed her PhD in 2019 at SOAS, University of London, titled: 'Food, Policy and Practice in Early Years Education and Care: children, practitioners and parents in a London nursery'. For her doctoral research, Francesca conducted ethnographic fieldwork in a state-maintained nursery in London over a 12-month period, developing a child-centred methodological approach to meaningfully involve children in research. Aside from investigating how children create self and peer identities through food and eating practices, her work explores how children’s food policy fits into family intervention policies in the context of Britain’s mixed economy of welfare, and how notions of ‘good food’ and ‘good parenting’ (particularly mothering) are interlinked.