Dr Agnese Cretella

Research Fellow, FoodSmartDublin, Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, TCD

Agnese Cretella joined the Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities in April 2020 to work on the IRC COALESCE funded project Food Smart Dublin. Prior to her collaboration with Food Smart Dublin, she was based at the Department of Geography of Trinity College to research the governance of food sharing – within the ERC funded project SHARECITY.

Agnese’s research examines the intersection of food and urban studies – by focusing on the political, economic and social tensions of contemporary urban foodscapes. Her academic focus revolves specifically around urban food governance – a topic she deepened by examining the emergence of food strategies, policies, ventures, social and cultural movements – and new urban developments in cities.

She is particularly interested in exploring the dynamics of injustice around food and how these convert into the practice of urban life. These dynamics include but are not limited to: the interplay between food and city-marketing, gentrification processes, intra-urban competition, smart cities and the creative class. She particularly explored these themes while working towards her PhD at the Department of Political Science of the University of Amsterdam.

Prior to the University of Amsterdam, she was granted a Marie Curie Fellowship at Wageningen University within the EU funded, research-training project “PUREFOOD: Urban, peri-urban and regional food dynamics: towards an integrated and territorial approach to food”. Her professional background includes working as a researcher for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome and for various food-related NGOs in London.

Peer-Reviewed publications:

Davies, A. R., Cretella, A., and Franck, V. (2019). Food sharing initiatives and food democracy: Practice and policy in three European cities. Politics and Governance, 7(4), 8-20. https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/2090

Cretella A., (2019). “Alternative food and the urban institutional agenda: Challenges and insights from Pisa”, Journal of Rural Studies, 69. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0743016718311768"

Cretella, A. (2019). “Between promise and practice: Exploring the politics of urban food strategies in European cities”, (Doctoral dissertation), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam. https://dare.uva.nl/search?identifier=d04d27a0-af62-46e2-a291-cd8468805822

Cretella A., Buenger M. S., (2016). “Food as creative city politics in the city of Rotterdam”, Cities, Volume 51, January 2016, Pages 1–10, In Current Research on Cities. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026427511530024X

Cretella A., (2016). “Revealing Urban Food Strategies”, in Metropolitan Ruralities, edited by Kjell Andersson, Stefan Sjöblom and Peter Ehrström , Emerald eds. https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S1057-192220160000023013/full/html

Cretella A., (2015). “Beyond the Alternative Complex. The London Urban Food Strategy and Neoliberal Governance”, Métropoles 13, Special Issue on Alternative Urban Development Policies.https://journals.openedition.org/metropoles/5147

Non peer-reviewed publications:

Anna Davies, Agnese Cretella, Monika Rut, Stephen Mackenzie, Vivien Franck (2019). “For a sustainable future, we need to reconnect with what we’re eating – and each other”, The Conversation UK. https://theconversation.com/for-a-sustainable-future-we-need-to-reconnect-with-what-were-eating-and-each-other-123490

cretella@tcd.ie