An urban ethnography reading group update! 📚

With the new year, our reading group has started again with much exciting literature ahead. Visit our website to read our reflections 👉 foodcharities.eu/urban-ethnog...

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We are excited to welcome 3 Research Assistants: Benedetta, Misaki, and Elke! They are already working on coding for Event Sequence Analysis (ESA) in Italy, Japan, & the Netherlands. Their work analyzes how charitable food providers obtain the resources necessary to fulfil their mission.

We are pleased to share that Alejandro @alexciordia.bsky.social gave a presentation, "Reconstructing the emergence of charitable food provision fields through ESA: Goals, challenges and prospects." at the ARS’25 Tenth International Workshop on Social Network Analysis in Naples on 30-31 October 2025.

Last week, our urban ethnography reading group met to discuss influential works 📚 — Sidewalk (Duneier, 1999), Code of the Street (Anderson, 1999), No Shame in My Game (Newman, 1999), and Wacquant’s (2002) review of these studies on urban poverty.

The Food Charities project had a kick-off meeting on Sept 24th at the Maastricht Sustainability Institute! PI Filippo Oncini @pipponcini.bsky.social gave a project overview, & postdoc Alejandro Ciordia @alexciordia.bsky.social presented on Events Sequence Analysis (key method for research module 1).

Some belated professional news:

A few months ago I started working as a postdoc at Maastricht University on the exciting ERC project @erc-foodcharities.bsky.social led by @pipponcini.bsky.social

Really happy to be part of this international team, based at the Maastricht Sustainability Institute!

Thrilled to welcome 3 new PhD researchers to our Food Charities project! 🎉

Marga (Rotterdam), Shiori (Kyoto), and Simona (Palermo) will conduct comparative urban ethnography in each city, exploring survival strategies through charitable food provision.

We are very excited to share the launch of a special issue in Global Food Security!

👉 Understanding Food Insecurity in High-Income Countries: New Theoretical Approaches, Multidimensional Perspectives, and Innovative Practices and Policy Responses

Read more and find the link below🔽

We are now on Bluesky 🎉

Using a comparative and relational approach, the Food Charities project explores how charitable food provision operates in urban spaces in different welfare and civil society contexts: Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands.

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