Ms Aoife Maher

About me:

Appointed in March 2024, Aoife holds a role as Research and Impact Associate. Primarily working within the Green Future Solutions team supporting businesses to reach their net zero and biodiversity recovery goals.

Aoife’s research interests include sustainable food systems, particularly the production of fruit and vegetables for regional and national markets. Her interdisciplinary PhD research investigates the production of fruit and vegetables in Devon and Cornwall and the relationships between growers and their marketplace intermediaries. In particular, she is interested in the complex ways that marketplace relationships shape on farm production practices. Aoife’s research looks at this question from a number of perspectives; historical and contemporary, conventional and agroecological, and also from a number of production and marketing scales.

Interests:

• Sustainable food systems
• Horticultural production and marketing – relationships within supply chains – historical, contemporary and projected futures
• Horticultural production in a changing climate

Choice, consumer knowledge and de-commoditisation within food systems

Qualifications:

• 2019 – 2024 PhD sociology (ongoing)
• 2008 – 2009 PdDip Local Government Management
• 2005- 2006 MA Politics and Contemporary History
• 2002 – 2005 BA hons History with Chinese studies