The Forum On Health, Environment and Development (FORHEAD) is pleased to announce its 6th Summer Institute, which is co-organised by the Center of Cooperative Innovation for Food Safety Governance. The topic of this year’s workshop will be Understanding and Addressing Food Safety Problems.
Food safety has become an issue of great concern in China over the last few years. Although the media focus has been largely on illegal use of additives and food fraud more generally, food safety issues encompass a wide range of problems that occur at different points in the chain from the production to the consumption of food. The risks involved vary widely from product to product and present very different kinds and levels of threat to human health from sources including bacteria, viruses and parasites, chemicals, growth hormones and veterinary drugs. Many food safety problems stem from complex interactions between the natural and social environments and collaboration between researchers with different disciplinary expertise is essential if they are to be addressed effectively. But capacity to design and carry out such research is limited.
This year’s FORHEAD Summer Institute will focus on food safety problems related to the production environment and the production process, including heavy metal pollution, farm chemicals, and animal husbandry. We will examine approaches to understanding food safety problems, their drivers and their trends, and current policies and public responses, with a focus on interactions between different policy systems and actors and the role of different disciplines.
Sessions will be led by experts in the field with different disciplinary expertise, including: Medical Geography, Environmental Toxicology, Risk Evaluation, Law, Economics, Social Psychology, Public Policy, Sociology, and Anthropology. Participants will also receive feedback on research designs for projects on which they are working and take part in interdisciplinary team work to develop integrated analysis of food safety problems. 
 
The Summer Institute will take place from July 20 to 25, 2014 in Guiyang, Guizhou Province. The workshop will be attended by members of the FORHEAD Working Group on Food Safety but a limited number of places will be open to others by application. Participants must be able to commit to attending the workshop for the full five days in order to receive support from FORHEAD.
 
Applications are invited from individuals based at Chinese academic institutions (including government research centres) and non-governmental organizations. Applicants should have at least a Master’s degree or equivalent work experience related to environment and health or food safety.
 
The workshop will be held in Chinese, and participants will be expected to read a packet of background materials (about 250 pages) before the meeting.
 
Applicants should apply online through the FORHEAD website by June 15th 2014. Please provide the following materials as required:
1)      C.V.
2)      An application letter indicating your current research interests, reasons for wanting to participate in the Institute, and how you expect it to inform your future work. Please also provide the names of two professional references.
 
Accommodation, meals and domestic travel costs will be covered by FORHEAD for Chinese participants.    
 
Please direct any questions to forhead@forhead.org.
 
Funding for the FORHEAD Summer Institute is provided by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.