Our colleague José Luís Vivero Pol recently gave us the heads-up on this Master of Research. José Luís also highlights that there are several scholarships available which will halve the fees and provide additional support, but these have to be requested. Here’s the description from the International University College of Turin’s website:
Pollenzo, June 20, 2016 – was officially launched with the ceremonial signing of the FLF Manifesto by Mr Carlo Petrini (Founder of the Slow Food International Movement), and by Professor Ugo Mattei (Academic Coordinator of the International University College of Turin).
As underlined in the Manifesto, the Master will start in 2017, will be structured as a joint program between the International University College of Turin (IUC) and the University of Gastronomic Science of Pollenzo (UniSG), and will involve a limited number of highly selected students in 18 months of study, investigation and practice around the global food regime, its legal construction and the role of finance. The main aim of the FLF Master will be to challenge and critically engage with the perceived inevitability of contemporary food regimes, in particular helping students imagine a new model based on ecologically connecting all living beings and the planet.
Recognizing that nowhere the inequality of “global” society is more visible than in the polarisation of the contemporary food regime, the FLF Master of Research aspires to strengthen the legal and financial intellectual critique with the pro-active development of alternative styles of professional practice and active citizenship, strengthening students’ awareness of the deep-seated entanglement of legal reasoning and financial innovation, and providing them with knowledge and experience of the strategies of civil society organization and practices of legal resistance.
Open to students with different backgrounds and degrees, the Master will engage with (i) the material processes and competing paradigms of food production and consumption, (ii) the institutional design possibilities allowed by the legal imaginary, and (iii) the forms of economic organisation nurtured by different types of financial architecture, to account for and circulate value within society.
In the words of Petrini and Mattei “Our FLF Master of Research will welcome students engaged with these guiding questions: How do different varieties of (i) legal institutions, (ii) financial architecture, and (iii) material practices of the food systems combine? What transformations do they work on the social and natural ecologies of our planet? How can they be redefined and recombined in order to produce new realities based on equality, ecology and justice?”
Please find here further information on the joint postgraduate research program
Text of the Agreement
The agreement was signed by Carlo Petrini, Ugo Mattei, Nora McKeon and Olivier De Schutter
MASTER OF RESEARCH in FOOD, LAW AND FINANCE
Constructing innovative and ecological understandings of food regimes
The Master of Research in FOOD, LAW AND FINANCE (FLF) is an innovative joint program of the International University College of Turin (IUC) and the University of Gastronomic Science of Pollenzo (UniSG) which aims at fleshing out the complementarities and political crossovers between law and finance understood as material forces that shape not only the food regime, but the lives of social and natural communities on the planet.
Structured around 18-months of study, investigation and practice, the FLF Master will challenge and critically engage with the perceived inevitability of contemporary food regimes, while helping students re-think the inevitability of the current system and imagining a new model based on ecologically connecting all living beings and the planet. The main objects will be (i) the material processes and competing paradigms of food production and consumption, (ii) the institutional design possibilities allowed by the legal imaginary, and (iii) the forms of economic organisation nurtured by different types of financial architecture, to account for and circulate value within society. Therefore, the FLF Master is built on the conviction that it is only through an innovative triangulation of these areas (Food, Law, Finance) that the complexity of the material tensions and political trade-offs implicit in the global production regime can be properly brought into focus. We all believe that considering “law” or “finance” in isolation (as realms of practice one step removed from the metabolic processes that fold the life of human communities into the ecological dynamics of the planet) has itself contributed to a range of widening and unsustainable inequalities.
Nowhere is evidence of the inequality of “global” society more visible than in the polarisation of the contemporary food regime, torn between the unhealthily fed and the life-threateningly undernourished. That’s why the FLF Master of Research wants to shift beyond intellectual critique towards the pro-active development of alternative styles of professional practice and active citizenship, by strengthening its students’ awareness of the deep-seated entanglement of legal reasoning and financial innovation, and providing them with knowledge and experience of the strategies of civil society organization and practices of legal resistance. It is our conviction that this foundational dimension – an ecological dimension that keeps together the complex web of life – ought to shape any heterodox study and thinking of the food regimes, and has supported our research activity for the last years.
Our FLF Master of Research will welcome students engaged with these guiding questions: How do different varieties of (i) legal institutions, (ii) financial architecture, and (iii) material practices of the food systems combine? What transformations do they work on the social and natural ecologies of our planet? How can they be redefined and recombined in order to produce new realities based on equality, ecology and justice? We are glad to be actively involved in the FLF project since its inception, and we look forward to welcoming the first class of M.Res students in January 2017.