Transdisciplinary design for food and sustainability, with Sonia Massari

Inside Ideas with Marc Buckley

Dr. Sonia Massari has more than 20 years of experience as a researcher, lecturer, consultant, and designer in the fields of food and sustainability education, design methods for innovative agri-food systems. She holds a Ph.D. in Food Experience Design from the Engineering Department at the University of Florence, Italy. For 12 years, she was the Academic Director of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Food Studies programs in Rome, and she designed and coordinated more than 50 academic programs and 150 educational activities on food and sustainability for prestigious international institutes. She teaches at several Universities around Europe. She teaches Sustainability Design Thinking at Roma Tre University and Sociology of Change, Emergent Sustainable Scenarios at ISIA Design School. She is a senior researcher and consultant at the Barilla Foundation and the academic director of the Future Food Academy. She is the co-founder of FORK: Food Design Opportunities Research Knowledge. She received the International Women Innovation Award “Tecno-visionaria” (2012), the NAFSA TLS Knowledge Community’s Innovative Research in International Education Award (2014), and the Food Studies ASFS Pedagogy Award (2020). She is a board member of the Association for the Study of Food and Society and serves on the editorial board of the International Journal Food Design. She has published several scientific papers about education, food and design, food studies, ICT, HCI applied to the agri-food sector. She has presented her research results in international conferences and workshops in 5 continents. In 2015, she was co-director and co-founder of the first European Conference on “Understanding Food Design: from user-centered to people-centered design” ( Milan, Italy). She works as a consultant for national and international TV programs, JRC Science Hubs, ADI, Gambero Rosso Magazine, ElleDecor, etc. She is a member of the Permanent Observatory on Design (ADI) and for 4 years she coordinated the thematic commission of the ADI Index on Food Design.

https://www.soniamassari.com/