We are delighted to welcome Dr Thomas Aneurin Smith to our food security discussion forum. Tom is a Teaching Assistant in Human Geography in the Department of Geography at the University of Sheffield. In this short article Tom explores the influence of young people on current practices in agriculture, pastoralism and fishing raising interesting questions about the relationship between adults and young people and the impact of this on future food production and environmental change

Tom’s current research interests include exploring the geographies of young people in the global South and the global North, the production and reproduction of environmental knowledges, and human-nature interactions. His doctoral research, completed in 2012, investigated the impacts of environmental education projects run by the state and non-governmental organisations in Tanzania. This included examining the role of young people as local environmental actors, how environmental knowledges are reproduced in urban and rural communities, and how different forms of environmental knowledge interact, are learnt, and enacted through particular spaces.

At Sheffield Tom teaches on the undergraduate Geography course and the Masters in International Development.