dr. S.R. McGreevy (Steven)

Steven R. McGreevy is an assistant professor of institutional rurban sustainability studies in the Department of Governance and Technology for Sustainability (CSTM). He is trained as an environmental sociologist, but has a broad interdisciplinary background in sustainable development, food systems, and environmental education. His research interests include novel approaches to sustainable bioregional revitalization, sustainable agrifood transitions and post-growth food systems, relinking of patterns of food consumption and production through policy and practice, and simulation and serious gaming as a tool for sustainability education and governance.

Before coming to UT, he spent 18 years in Japan. After receiving his D.Ag from Kyoto University (2012) he worked at the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature where he proposed and led the FEAST Project. FEAST analyzed patterns of food consumption, food-related social practices and their socio-cultural meanings, and conducted food system mapping specific to national, regional, and local production, distribution, and consumption contexts. FEAST partnered with diverse stakeholders to vision plausible futures and to initiate food citizenship-oriented experiments and actions. At its conclusion, FEAST was inaugurated as a non-profit organization in 2021 and continues to conduct research to solve environmental and social problems and support transdisciplinary efforts in local sustainable food policy and education.

He is also a founding member and co-chair of the Future Earth Knowledge-Action Network on Systems of Sustainable Consumption and Production.

Expertise

• Social Sciences

  • Food
  • Governance
  • Transformation
  • Sustainability
  • Learning
  • Process

• Earth and Planetary Sciences

  • Japan
  • Ecodevelopment

Organisations

As part of the cross-cutting TPS Rurban Futures Collective my research interests are focused on...

• Commons/commoning as institutional rurban forms
• Integrated policy and governance structures that cross rurban space, resource flows, economic interaction
• Sustainable regional economy, bioregionalism in practice and policy
• Diverse economy and lifestyles of sustainable rurban practices
• Visions of rurban futures

Publications

Research profiles

Affiliated study programs

Courses academic year 2024/2025

Courses in the current academic year are added at the moment they are finalised in the Osiris system. Therefore it is possible that the list is not yet complete for the whole academic year.

Courses academic year 2023/2024

Projects I am a part of:

• Rurban Ateliers: Co-imagining alternative futures, socio-spatial relationships, and policy actions for just sustainability transformations; co-lead with Corelia Baibarac-Duignan (BMS Starter grant) (2024-2030)
• COMBINED: Combatting biodiversity loss and improving climate change resilience through evidence-based, integrated, and adaptive landscape governance in the Netherlands; sub-WP lead (NWA Climate and Nature) (2024-2030)

Projects funded through the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Sciences- KAKEN system.

• The role of informal practices in convivial post-growth rural lifestyles (2019-2024); Principal Investigator
• Comparative study on social system and policy towards regeneration of agri-food system from local perspectives in post-Corona era (2021-2026); WG Member

Finished projects

Lifeworlds of Sustainable Food Consumption and Production- Agrifood Systems in Transition

FEAST

The FEAST Project takes a transdisciplinary approach to explore the realities and potential for sustainable agrifood transition at sites in Japan, Thailand, Bhutan, and China with significance for the entire region. We analyze patterns of food consumption, food-related social practices and their socio- cultural meanings, and consumer-based agency to change deeply-held cultural dimensions. We map and evaluate food systems specific to national, regional, and local production, distribution, and consumption contexts. Building upon that work, we engage in action research to partner with stakeholders to vision desirable and plausible futures and to initiate food citizenship-oriented experiments and actions. FEAST co-designs and co-produces socially-robust knowledge and mechanisms that challenge mainstream economic thinking on consumption and growth, work to redefine the notion of long- term food security at the regional level, and engage society in a public debate on our relationship with food and nature that questions shared beliefs and values to reacclimatize consumers as citizens and co-producers in the foodscapes around them.

In the press

Sustainable food systems for a post-growth world (link)

• Scientists offer blueprint for sustainable redesign of food systems (UT)
• Urbane Gärtner als Revolutionäre (Frankfurter Allgemeine)

Address

University of Twente

Ravelijn (building no. 10), room 1129
Hallenweg 17
7522 NH Enschede
Netherlands

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Organisations