New co-centre involving researchers and institutions from across Ireland and the UK receives £60m in joint funding
By Mr George Wigmore (Senior Communications Officer), Published
Researchers from the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London have received funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) in support of a new co-centre that will bring together world-leading food researchers from institutions across Ireland and the UK for the first time.
The £60m of joint funding for the Co-Centre for SUstainable and REsilient FOOD Systems (SUREFOOD) was announced this week in Dublin by Simon Harris TD, Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science; Michelle Donelan, UK Government Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology; and Katrina Godfrey, Permanent Secretary at Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs. At City, the Centre for Food Policy will receive a proportion of the £5,842,693 awarded by the UKRI over the next six years.
The co-centre is being led by Queen’s University Belfast and University College Dublin, and they will work closely with the University of Sheffield, which will lead on the integrated UKRI research programme. It will involve 15 organisations and 68 academics with research expertise in specific areas that are core to food system transformation, including food safety, production, nutrition, plant and animal science, behavioural change, data science, food system governance, and the political process of food system transformation.
Through cutting-edge research and working closely with government and industry, the interdisciplinary research team will deliver innovative solutions to drive societal and political change in the transition to climate neutrality by 2050. In the Centre for Food Policy, the funding will allow a research fellow to look at policy coherence between Irish and UK food systems.
Dr Christian Reynolds, Reader in Food Policy in the Centre for Food Policy and co-principle investigator of the UKRI-funded arm of the initiative, said:
Other SUREFOOD-funded investigators in the Centre for Food Policy at City include Professor Christina Vogel, Professor in Food Policy, and Dr Rebecca Wells, Senior Lecturer in Food Policy.
The co-centres programme is funded by Science Foundation Ireland, Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs and UKRI through the International Science Partnerships Fund, and co-funded by industry.
Both co-centres will formally commence activities on 1 January 2024, and will be funded to 2030.
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