Dr Rebecca Laycock Pedersen
Positions
Adjunct Assistant Professor
Contact information
Background
Educational Background
PhD Environment & Sustainability, Keele University,
Postgraduate Certificate Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Keele University,
MSc Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science, Lund University,
BFA Visual Arts and Environmental Studies, University of Victoria,
Biography
Rebecca Laycock Pedersen is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Calgary and a Postdoctoral Researcher at Lund University in Sweden. Previously she has held appointments as an Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscapre at the University of Calgary, Postdoctoral Researcher at Blekinge Institute of Technology (Sweden), and Teaching Fellow and Sustainability Project Officer at Keele University (UK). She received her PhD on university student-led food growing initiatives in 2019 from Keele University. She has an academic background that spans social sciences, natural sciences, and the fine arts.
Through her research, she aims to contribute to societal transformations towards sustainability. Her research focuses on three overlapping topics: sustainability education, sustainable food, and participatory methods. She strives to understand how educational and food systems can be made more sustainable, and view learning and education, as well as participatory, action-oriented, and arts-based methods as means to increase the sustainability of education and food systems.
She is an experienced educator, and has developed and taught courses, as well as supervised students at undergraduate and graduate level. She has taught on topics including sustainability, sustainability education, food systems, and social research methods. In 2017, she received a Teaching Excellence Award from Keele University for her student-centred, participatory, and culturally inclusive approach to supporting Chinese students in their transition into UK higher education.
She has collaborated with a variety of external partners in her research, including UK’s National Union of Students (NUS), the International Confederation of Dietetic Associations (ICDA), and Botildenborg (a sustainable farm and innovation centre in Malmö).
Projects
This research is supported by a Formas Early Career Researcher Mobility Grant (decision number: FR-2021/0004).
The project explores how sustainable food entrepreneurs and change agents attempt to 'be the change they want to see' through their enterprises.
Specifically, the project will study:
- How can sustainable food enterprises be understood as both an outcome and a process?
- What are the social, economic, and political factors that influence whether sustainable food entrepreneurs and change agents can live out their values through their enterprise?
- How do sustainable food entrepreneurs and change agents navigate the tensions between their desire to live out their values and constraints that prevent them from doing so?
- What sustainability competencies do sustainable food entrepreneurs and change agents develop through attempting to live out their values through their enterprise?
To answer these questions, research will be conducted in Calgary, Canada, and Malmö, Sweden.
Awards
- Teaching Excellence Award in Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, Keele University. 2016
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