Relocalising food processing value chains

This event is part of the Global Value Chains Research Cluster lunchtime seminar series.

Speakers: Prof. Lisa De Propris (Birmingham Business School), Dr. Pamela Robinson (Birmingham Business School) and Dr. Jane Glover (De Montfort University)

Biographies

Lisa De Propris' research interests are: small firms and clusters; competitiveness in clusters and regions; forms of clusters and governance; innovation; clusters and foreign direct investment; regional development; knowledge economy and clusters, and creative and cultural industries. In parallel, Lisa has always been concerned with the role of the government and institutions, and has looked at policy implications arising from my work, including cluster policy, EU regional and industrial policy.

Pamela Robinson joined University of Birmingham in January 2010. Before coming to the Business School she was a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Social Sciences and a Research Associate at the Centre for Business Relationships Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) at Cardiff University. Previously employed in the retail sector in a number of senior management roles, with responsibility for buying and marketing of food products. Followed by a period of consultancy, advising international retailers on their corporate social responsibility programmes and ethical sourcing policies.

Jane Glover is a research fellow at CREME.  Jane’s research interests lie in entrepreneurship and small family business.  She is also interested in rural sociology, focusing on non-financial reasons to be in business and the social, cultural and symbolic importance of small family firms.  She is particularly interested in how small agricultural family firms have shown particular resilience and entrepreneurial tendencies, when compared to other family businesses, throughout a long history of disruptive change, ranging from changes in how the business is operated to unforeseen natural disasters.  Other projects Jane has worked on at Loughborough University include: daily learning and innovation in small firms, how can we measure innovation, designing for innovation and safety, problem-solving and emotions, problem-solving, recovery and creativity, the work-life balance of home-working, self-employed women and energy reduction across the food supply chain.  Jane has also reviewed papers for Human Relations and the International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Innovation.  Jane is also a member of the Centre of Organisational Resilience (COR) and LIRN (Loughborough Innovation Research Network).at Loughborough University, where she works part-time and has recently been awarded some seedcorn funding to explore the role of emotions in farming businesses.

Jane is currently working on the EDA project Making Enterprise and Diversity a way of Doing Business with Prof. Monder Ram and Prof. Kiran Trehan from Birmingham University.