Sara Smaal

Position: Researcher
Professorship: Urban Food Issues
Email: sara@flevocampus.nl
Social media: LinkedIn, X

Three days a week, Sara Smaal works as a research fellow at the Flevo Campus and Aeres University of Applied Sciences in Almere, facilitating Esther Veen’s Urban Food Issues professorship. Through various projects, she studies the influence of the social food environment on food routines of people living in Almere. She is also in the process of completing her doctoral research on urban food policy, food initiatives and social justice at the Flemish Institute for Research on Agriculture, Fishing and Food (ILVO) and Ghent University for the RECOMS research project.

Sara has an academic background in social geography and planology at Utrecht University, where she obtained her BSc, and the University of Groningen, where she obtained her MSc. She is captivated by transdisciplinary and participative research. Based on her doctoral research, she developed a board game for urban food factors, called the RE-ADJUSTTool (REflecting on & ADvancing Justice in Urban food STrategies). By discussing a number of questions and scoring on aspects during the game, the players discover what is involved in a fairer, more humane and more inclusive food system in their city or region. The RE-ADJUSTool can be downloaded or requested in Dutch and in English on the website.