Sally Shortall is interested in farm families, and how their values and decisions shape agricultural practice. She is particularly interested in the role of women in farm families. Her research on gender relations in agriculture has focused on dynamics of power, how it is accepted and almost unquestioned that women rarely inherit land, are not recognised by the industry, and have limited access to capital and training. This persists in a context of general improvements in gender equality. To date her research has focused on Europe, Canada, Australia, Tanzania and Nigeria. She is currently working on women’s role in leading on ecological transitions and leading a Horizon Europe project (2023-2026) on this question. She has published extensively on these questions. Sally is also involved in a Horizon Europe project (2023-2027) looking at farmer health and safety and mental well-being, with a focus on the ethics of interviewing farmers who have had life changing accidents.

Sally Shortall was twice elected President of the European Society for Rural Sociology (2015-17; 2017-19). She was elected First Vice-President of the International Rural Sociology Association (2016-2020).

She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in 2021, and elected an International Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry for international service to agriculture.

Sally holds Visiting Professorships in Queen’s University Belfast, and has a 30% appointment in the Technology University of the Southeast of Ireland. She is an Irish citizen.

President, Rural Sociological Society

• Jennifer Sherman, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology
• Washington State University
• Wilson-Short 215, Pullman, WA 99164
• 509-335-4163
• jennifer_sherman@wsu.edu

President, Asociación Latinoamericana de Sociología Rural

• Germán Quaranta
• Ceil Conicet
• Saavedra 15 4o. piso
• C1083ACA, Buenos Aires – Argentina
• gquaranta@ceil-conicet.gov.ar
• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0042-0684
• http://www.ceil-conicet.gov.ar/acerca-de/integrantes/german-quaranta/

President of the Australasian Food Network

• Dr Emma Sharp, Rutherford Discovery Fellow
• 301.531B | 23 Symonds Street | Te Kura Matai Taiao/ School of
• Environment | Waipapa Taumata Rau/ The University of Auckland |
• Private Bag 92019, Auckland 1142 | Aotearoa/ New Zealand
• el.sharp@auckland.ac.nz

President of the Asian Rural Sociology Association

• Motoki Akitsu, Professor
• Graduate School of Agriculture
• Kyoto University
• Kitashirakawa Oiwake-cho, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8502, Japan
• e-mail　akitsu.motoki.4r@kyoto-u.ac.jp

President: European Society for Rural Sociology

• Annette Aagaard Thuesen, Associate Professor
• The Faculty of Business and Social Sciences
• Department of Political Science and Public Management
• Danish Centre for Rural Research
• University of Southern Denmark
• +45 65 50 42 25
• aat@sam.sdu.dk  
• https://www.sdu.dk/ansat/aat  

Ruth McAreavey is Professor of Sociology at Newcastle University. Her research focuses on rural social change and inequalities; migration, research ethics and methodologies. She has published extensively on sustainable rural development and on inequalities faced by migrants in the labour market and in other parts of everyday life. Ruth’s research has been funded by government departments and agencies as well as independent charitable trusts.

Ruth is an active member of various international research networks including the European Society for Rural Sociology (ESRS) and the European Sociological Association. She is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and co-editor-in-chief of Sociologia Ruralis. Ruth is proactive in engaging with third sector organisations and with government departments. She is a Trustee of Plunkett UK.

Sergio Schneider is Full Professor of Sociology of Rural Development and Food Studies at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil, where he teaches and research at the Graduate Program of Sociology (PPGS) and Rural Development (PGDR).

Rudi Messner is a post-doctoral researcher at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. After more than 25 years in the consumer goods industry, mostly in China, he received his PhD from the QUT Business School in 2021 with a thesis on the paradoxical economy of food waste in Australian horticultural supply chains. He is now working at the QUT School of Management and the Agrifood Systems Programme of the QUT Centre for Agriculture and the Bioeconomy. Rudi’s research interests include agrifood system impacts and the governance of food system sustainability transitions. He is currently involved in research projects on sustainable grazing and the wellbeing of beef producers and an industry project to map food waste in Australian red meat supply chains. Rudi has recently commenced a new role as a post-doc on a three-year Australian Government Research Council grant titled “On-farm food shocks: Transitions to future food security”.

Professor Hugh Campbell is the Chair of Sociology at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. He is also a Visiting Professor at Ruralis, Trondheim, Norway, and Visiting Scholar at Kyoto University. He is interested in alternatives to mainstream farming practices, agri-food governance, de-colonial scholarship, agrarian extremism and gender dynamics in rural areas. From 2000-2010 he was full time Director of the Centre for the Study of Agriculture, Food and Environment at the University of Otago, and took a leading role in a number of research projects into the dynamics of agri-environmental change in New Zealand. His current research activities involve: farming, colonisation and de-colonisation in New Zealand, the rise of agrarian extremism, climate change adaptation and farmers, and the implications of the rise of cultivated proteins for agri-food systems.

Prof. Joost Dessein (°1971) is Associate Professor (tenured) at the department of Agricultural Economics (Ghent University, Belgium), and an affiliated member of the Centre for Sustainable Development (Ghent University). He holds an Msc in Agricultural Engineering and a Msc and PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Joost is president of the European Society for Rural Sociology.

With colleagues of the research group INSPIRA (Institutional, Socio-economic and Political Issues in Rural-urban Areas) he focuses on the governance of local food system, and related themes such as social and environmental justice and food democracy. He also studies the political and epistemological context of agro-ecology and the role of different knowledge systems in the transitions of the food system. His research has a strong though not exclusive focus on the Global South.

Carla Gras is Senior Researcher for the National Council of Scientific and Technological Research of Argentina (CONICET) in the Interdisciplinary School of Social Studies at the University of San Martín, Buenos Aires, Argentina. She is Professor in the School of Sociology at the University of San Martín. Her research focuses on the political economy of agrarian change in Latin America with particular reference to Argentina. Her interests include agrarian class differentiation, agribusiness expansion, the financialization of farmland and agriculture, and corporate and family farming organizations. She has done research and fieldwork in the Pampa and Northwester regions of Argentina. She has been VicePresident of the Latin American Rural Sociology Association (ALASRU) between 2018-2022. At present, she is Associate Editor of the Journal of Agrarian Change.

Leif Jensen is Distinguished Professor of Rural Sociology and Demography at The Pennsylvania State University, USA. He received a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Vermont and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His areas of specialization include demography, social stratification, and the sociology of economic change. His publications focus on a range of topics including poverty and inequality, underemployment and employment hardship, informal work, and immigration. In his international work he has studied children and youth, and gender and agriculture. Much of his scholarship focuses on rural people and places, and rural/urban differences. Over the years his research program has been supported by grants from the U.S. federal government and private foundations.