Aims and Objectives
Our main ambition is to foster interdisciplinary cooperation in research, education, and outreach. We strive to realize this goal through acquisition of externally funded research projects, development of interdisciplinary education, promotion of communication between researchers by means of seminars, workshops, and conferences, and representation of the VU in national and international food and nutrition security forums.
We also aim to enrich existing (monodisciplinary) theory and tools to account for the physical, economic, social, and cultural reality of food production, transport, and consumption.
Finally, we strive to ensure that research is demand-driven, starting from real-world problems. Here, we endorse transdisciplinary approaches and capacity building as important components of research projects. Co-creation of expertise with relevant stakeholders and actors (e.g., through partnerships with international and Dutch knowledge institutes) is a key component of this venture.
Organization
We bring together people and groups from various institutes as well as from two faculties of the VU, the School of Business and Economics (SBE) and the Faculty of Science. Our management team consists of Director Dr. Lia van Wesenbeeck and Deputy Director Dr. Denyse Snelder. Research associates are affiliated to departments or groups within the VU, but devote significant time and effort to research, education, and outreach of the institute.
History
The roots of the ACFWS are rich and can be traced back to the Centre for World Food Studies (in Dutch: Stichting Onderzoek Wereldvoedselvoorziening or SOW-VU), which was founded in 1977 by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Agriculture and the VU Amsterdam. Although the research agenda consisted of many crosscutting issues, the SOW-VU focused on the development of new tools, poverty reduction, management of natural resources, and agricultural and food policy.
During the decades when the SOW-VU was active, it achieved international recognition not only for its contribution to knowledge in the domain of food and nutrition security but also for its demonstrated ability to develop analytical tools for addressing critical, often policy-related, questions. The ACWFS carries on the legacy of the SOW-VU by referencing and drawing from its former tools of empirical, data-driven, country-wide models that not only capture economic processes but also include physical, environmental, geographic and sociocultural constraints and interactions.