In May 2026, the team submitted evidence to the Right to Food UK Commission. It highlights how access to food and related welfare support increasingly depends on digital infrastructure, devices, design and skills; and that digital exclusion serves as a barrier to realising the right to food in practice.
This working paper presents findings for the second, in-depth phase of the research in England. It focuses on the experience of marginalised populations as well as how digital food assistance practices interact with political and economic processes.
Together with the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA), the team has edited a blog series on ‘The politics of food and technology’ based on their IHSA conference panel.
After several weeks of mass starvation in Gaza dominating global television coverage, news reports of similar conditions in Sudan’s El Fasher, once Darfur’s capital, are finally emerging. Both regions remain under siege, with starvation deployed as a weapon for the purpose of emptying and occupying them.
This article argues that the digitalisation of food assistance mimics aspects of colonialism, especially in terms of the asymmetries involved in the extraction of data (as a valuable resource) from vulnerable populations and the dominating role of US-based multinationals.
This working paper reports on phase I – the exploratory phase – of ESRC-funded research into the effects of digitalising food assistance in India.
This working paper examines the digitalisation of food assistance in the UK, focusing on its implementation, challenges, and socio-political implications.
This working paper reports on the exploratory phase of ESRC-funded research into the effects of digitalising food assistance in Sudan. The main question addressed is: to what extent have food assistance and social welfare practices been digitalised, and why?
A freedom of information request has revealed that an AI system used by the UK government for assessing benefits cases is apparently getting it wrong by a “statistically significant” amount.
In this blog, IHSA Vice-President and Senior Research Fellow at the Food Studies Centre at SOAS (University of London) Susanne Jaspars summarises and expands upon a contribution to the roundtable that followed the inaugural IHSA Annual Lecture on “War and Humanity” held in Bergen in May 2024.