Major £1.25 million funding award for project investigating the politics of famine

The political circumstances that lead to famines, and that allow them to continue over months and years, are to be investigated by researchers at the University of Bath, following the award of a major funding grant from the European Research Council (ERC).

The team, made up of researchers in the UK, South Sudan and Somalia, has received £1.25 million from the ERC's prestigious Starting Grant fund to complete the five-year 'Everyday Politics of Famine' (PolFam) project.

They will carry out a unique multi-site research project at locations in South Sudan and Somalia, to understand the micro politics among communities that actually experience famine, observing and interviewing residents to better understand the social and political meanings of famine.

The project's leader, Dr Naomi Pendle, a Lecturer in Bath's Department of Social and Policy Sciences, says: "More than 690,000 people are currently experiencing famine, with 24 million people on the edge of famine*. Famines are also becoming more frequent and deadly, especially as warring parties are turning to starvation as a method of war. To understand why famines persist we need to deepen our understanding of famine politics."

Dr Pendle says that current understanding of famine politics is dangerously outdated: "While we know that most contemporary famines are caused by wartime acts of starvation, we do not have a good grasp of famine's social and political meaning in communities that have experienced it, and how these meanings shape famine politics in the future.

"We need to better understand how regions where famines were uncommon even fifty years ago, have now become prone to deadly famines. We also need to pay attention to how social discourse can shift blame away from governments and warring parties, and instead leave famine survivors feeling guilty."

She adds: "For years, there has been a consensus that famine is the result of political failure - but our understanding of the politics at play has been limited by the lack of in-depth research that prioritises the perspectives and experiences of people who actually experience famine, and by dated assumptions about the nature of these politics."

"There is an urgent need to understand why famine persists not just because of the human suffering it causes, but because of what it can reveal about contemporary global power and politics."

The project will focus on four social elements: histories and musical memories of past famine; community-narratives that enforce social networks; burial and posthumous practices; and media and social media's role in anti-famine politics. Importantly, the research prioritises being embedded in the communities of study, to allow the team to carry out ethnographic observations.

The team is primarily made up of South Sudanese and Somali scholars, many of whom sadly have first-hand experience of surviving famine themselves. All of the team, including the Dr Pendle, will build on years of existing experience living in these contexts during war and crises. They piloted their research with previous British Academy funding that looked that the role of law during famine.

The project team aim to deliver a new theory of the politics of famine, that prioritises the social and political realities of those who have experienced famine, to reinvigorate anti-famine activism and to make famine politically unthinkable.

Dr Pendle and her team have also recently been awarded a British Academy funded grant of nearly £300,000 for a project titled Death during Famine that focuses on research in South Sudan, with a significant dimension aimed at supporting the revival of famine studies at universities in famine contexts.

Professor Monica Greco, Head of Bath's Department of Social and Policy Sciences, said: "We are delighted for Dr Naomi Pendle to be awarded this prestigious ERC Starting Grant. The project promises to deliver crucial new understanding of the factors that lead to and perpetuate famine conditions, which will be of great use to policymakers and organisations looking to prevent famines in future."

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