UCL Geography graduate gets Highly Commended at RGS-IBG Food Geographies prize

Currently an MSc student in the Urban Spatial Science course at the UCL Centre of Advanced Spatial Analysis, Nanami received the award for her undergraduate dissertation on urban food insecurity in Johannesburg.

Her work looked at the food desert concept and its limitations in relation to the informal food economy.

She gathered census data and analysed measures of distance to formal food outlets alongside looking at the Quality of Life Survey from Gauteng City-Region to explore accessibility to informal food outlets, and compared the two data sets.

Nanami explained her interest in the topic, "I was introduced to the notion of food deserts in the Geocomputation module offered by the Department in year two.

"I learned that much of the research on this topic had been focused on Global North, especially in the US and the UK. Therefore, I chose to explore how the concept may be applied to urban areas in the Global South.

"The choice of the city of Johannesburg was initially driven by the availability of data. Still, it turned out to be a very interesting city to explore this topic due to the distinct spatial patterns due to the long-lasting effects of Apartheid Spatial Planning and accessibility to food differing by areas depending on the type of outlets."

Nanami plans on continuing her use of quantitative analysis to address topics in the Global South, something she has been exploring during her postgraduate degree.

To learn more about Food Geographies Research Group, visit the Royal Geographical Society website.

You can find out more about the BA Geography with Social Data degree on our study pages.