Asking for Advice as a Burgeoning Academic
walker tottman
Hello everyone!
I’m looking for community advice, and I hope this is appropriate to ask you all here.
I'm just finishing a Masters program (in Canada). I am deeply passionate about researching food loss and waste (FLW). However, my academic research and careers have been peripheral to FLW (cultural anthropology, archaeology, political ecology, environmental studies, and environmental psychology). From this, I believe I have pertinent skills to do FLW research, but I do not have any immediate connections within the field of FLW studies. Do any of you community members have advice on directions I can take to get involved?
My primary idea is to apply for a PhD program that researches FLW. However, I have received numerous comments that I should reconsider if this is the most advisable way of contributing to the issue of FLW. I wonder if other options are available to get into the field and if I should try my hand at these before committing to a 4-6+ year PhD program? If there are other ways to be involved besides within an academic PhD, I’m at a loss as to what and where those are. I also wonder, in 6 years when I (hopefully) finish the PhD program, if I’ll be in a less advantageous position than if I had started with an organization right now and begun to gain experience immediately.
If it’s important to situate myself, I’m most interested in FLW that occurs upstream of the retail sector, as I believe this will provide insights into understanding some of the systemic drivers of FLW.
As a community of academics and knowledgeable people with considerable experience in the field, I’m asking if anyone would like to share their advice on entering the field? How have you found efficacy in studying and contributing to the dialogues on FLW, and what would you recommend to a person interested in contributing themselves?
Thank you very much,
Walker Tottman
he/him, settler
Chloe Alexander
Hey Walker,
I hope you are doing well.
That is exciting to hear that you want to delve into the food loss and waste field. I know you are not set on doing your PhD, but if you ever want to chat about what it would be like please let me know. I am in the 6th year of my PhD at the University of Guelph (Ontario) studying food loss and waste government policies across Canada.
Chloe Alexander
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