Jim Scown is a Research Fellow at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, working at the intersections of the environmental and medical humanities. He has also worked as Lecturer in Environmental Humanities at Exeter and as Farming Co-Lead at the Food, Farming and Countryside Commission (FFCC). His research is on the cultural and lived relations between people and the environment, from 1800 to the present.
Jim’s work brings historical and textual evidence together with ethnographic and social science approaches, with a focus on the links between soil, agriculture, and sustainable food systems. At the European Centre, his research examines the social and biological relations that shape soil and human health by placing the current agri-food transition in dialogue with changes in agriculture that took place in the mid-twentieth century. This 6-year research project is funded by the Wellcome Trust.