Professor Tim Lang
Contact
- Professor Tim Lang
- +44 (0)20 7040 8798
- t.lang@city.ac.uk
Postal Address
Northampton Square
London
EC1V 0HB
UK
About
Background
Tim Lang has been Professor of Food Policy at City University London's Centre for Food Policy since 2002. He founded the Centre in 1994. After a PhD in social psychology at Leeds University, he became a hill farmer in the 1970s in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire which shifted his attention to food policy, where it has been ever since. For years, he's engaged in academic and public research and debate about its direction, locally to globally. His abiding interest is how policy addresses the mixed challenge of being food for the environment, health, social justice, and citizens. What is a good food system? How is ours measured and measuring up?
He has been a consultant to the World Health Organisation (eg auditing the Global Top 25 Food Companies on food and health 2005), FAO (eg co-chairing the FAO definition of sustainable diets 2010) and UNEP (eg co-writing its 2012 Avoiding Future Famines report). He has been a special advisor to four House of Commons Select Committee inquiries, two on food standards (1998-9 & 1999), globalisation (2000) and obesity (2003-04), and a consultant on food security to the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House 2007-09). He was a Commissioner on the UK Government's Sustainable Development Commission (2006-11), reviewing progress on food sustainability. He was on the Council of Food Policy Advisors to the Dept for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (2008-10), and is a member of the Mayor of London's Food Board (2009 – present). He helped launch the 100 World Cities Urban Food Policy Pact in Milan 2015.
He and the Centre for Food Policy at City University London work closely with scientific and civil society organisations, the latter in the UK notably through Sustain (which he chaired in the past), the UK Food Group, and Food & Climate Research Network (Oxford University). He has been Vice-President of the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health (since 1999) and President of Garden Organic (since 2008). He is special advisor to the Food Research Collaboration, an inter-University, inter-disciplinary academic collaboration with UK civil society (www.foodresearch.org.uk) which he founded, and helped create City’s role in the 5 University IFSTAL partnership (www.ifstal.ac.uk) which shares food systems thinking for post-graduates in a wide range of disciplines.
He has written and co-written many articles, reports, chapters and books. His most recent books are Food Wars (with Michael Heasman, Routledge, 2015), Unmanageable Consumer (with Yiannis Gabriel, Sage, 2015), Ecological Public Health (with Geof Rayner, Routedge Earthscan, 2012), Food Policy (with D Barling and M Caraher, Oxford University Press, 2009) and the Atlas of Food (with E Millstone, Earthscan 2003/2008), which won the André Simon award 2003. He writes frequently in the media and wrote a monthly column in The Grocer 2000-15.
He was elected Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health in 2001, and Fellow by Distinction in 2014. He was elected Hon Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Cooks (City of London) in 2008. He won the BBC R4 Derek Cooper award in 2004, the Observer Lifetime Achievement award in 2007, and the Agri-Bagri Award of the Australia-New Zealand Agri-Food Network also in 2007. He rides a bicycle to work, doesn't own a car and grows vegetables and fruit in his London garden.
His current research interests include:
- The political and policy battles over sustainable diets and the meaning of food security;
- Resolving the institutional case for coherent food policies (pre- and post-Brexit);
- Food democracy and the growth of democratic experimentalism about the future of food;
- The shape and status of EU, UK and global food policies.
Qualifications
BA (Hons), PhD, FFPH, Hon DSc
Employment
Professor of Food Policy
Awards
2015 Chancellor’s Prize, City University London (Lord Mayor of London)
2014 Fellow by Distinction, Faculty of Public Health
2013 Highly commended award, BMA public health book of the year (for Ecological Public Health)
2009 Highly commended award, BMA public health book of the year (for Food Policy)
2009 Fellow, Prince of Wales Food and Farming Summer School, Royal Agricultural College/Organic Research Centre
2009 Honorary Doctor of Science, University of Lincoln
2008 Honorary Freeman, Worshipful Company of Cooks of the City of London
2008 Honorary Fellowship, University of Wales Institute at Cardiff
2007 Agri-Bagri Award, Agri-Food Network of Australia and New Zealand
2007 Observer Lifetime / Hall of Fame Award, UK
2004 Citation (runner up) for Sicco Manshot Prize, The Hague, NL
2004 BBC Radio 4 Food Derek Cooper Award, UK
2003 Caroline Walker Trust award, UK
2003 André Simon Food Book of the Year (for Millstone & Lang The Atlas of Food)
1990 Glenfiddich Award for the work of the London Food Commission 1984-90
Professional Memberships
Member, The Lancet-EAT Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems (May 2016-Sept 2017), and co-chair of Policy working party on that
Member, World Public Health Nutrition Association, 2014 ff
Member, International Science Committee, Carasso Foundation, Spain & France, 2013 ff
Member, Scientific Advisory Committee, EAT-Forum Stordalen Foundation, Norway, 2013 ff
Editorial Board, International Journal of the Sociology of Agriculture & Food (of the International Sociological Association RC-40), 2010 ff
Advisory Committee, Activating Change Together for Community Food Security (ACT for CFS) (consortium of researchers across Canadian academia), 2012-15
Member, Advisory Group, Food Climate Research Network, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford 2013 - present.
Fellow, Prince of Wales Food & Farming Summer School, Royal Agricultural College / Organic Research Centre, 2009 to present
Member, Advisory Group for ‘Livestock – Climate Change’s Forgotten Sector: Global Public Opinion on Meat and Dairy Consumption’ project (2013-15), Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House)
Member, London Food Board, advising the Mayor of London, 2010 - present
Research
- The definition, articulation and governance of sustainable diets
- Food security
- How institutional structures help and hinder moves towards integrated food policies
- Food democracy and the growth of democratic experimentalism
- The shape and status of EU and UK food policies