The feasibility of introducing a National Ovarian Cancer Screening programme similar to that offered to women for breast cancer, together with measurement of the procedure?s impact on morbidity and mortality is being supported by the MRC. We are conducting the Quality of Life and psychosocial impact of the screening study and to date have more than 187,000 women enrolled.

Mindfulness is an evidence-based meditation practice with proven benefits that include amelioration of depression, reduction in anxiety/stress, improved quality of life, modest pain management and general positive wellbeing (Cavanagh et al, 2014; Lomas et al, 2017; Hilton et al, 2017). Not only is mindfulness beneficial for individual health, moreover; research has shown that mindfulness has the power, when practised frequently, to alter areas in the brain involved in interoception and emotional awareness (Santarnecchi et al, 2015). While there is nothing new about mindfulness per se, having its roots in Buddhist practices, developments such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy have formalised what can now be delivered as self/clinical interventions (Williams & Penman, 2011). How the practice is formatted, delivered and practised is therefore of interest to individuals but also employers seeking to utilize mindfulness when unlocking personal and work-based human potential.

Against the background of the ongoing crisis of the world’s food systems, this research project investigates how agricultural knowledge shapes, and is shaped by, its broader cultural, economic, socio-technical and socio-ecological context. A transdisciplinary approach –theoretically and empirically explorative, methodologically innovative, and action-oriented—to the production, transmission and application of agricultural knowledge in Belgium, and Europe more broadly, offers a powerful way of thinking about the complex relationships that exist between food systems and agricultural knowledge. Drawing on insights from a variety of disciplinary perspectives –ranging from political ecology, Science, Technology and Society studies, agroecology and ecofeminism—this project seeks to: (a) develop an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ‘political agroecology’ framework that broadens and opens up critical discussions on agricultural knowledges; (b) study processes of enclosure and commoning through the study of a science-and-society controversy around the development of genetically engineered potatoes in Belgium to frame agricultural knowledge trajectories; (c) involve ‘concerned groups’ –including farmers, researchers, policy-makers, NGOs and activists— in the development of strategies and actions for social innovation in agricultural knowledge systems. The innovative approach advanced in this research provides a necessary corrective to the prevailing yet partial views of existing approaches to agricultural knowledge systems. By using the lens of ‘political agroecology’, the project engages with the power dynamics inherent in the social interactions which are part of agricultural knowledge, while exploring possibilities for social innovation. The project is hosted at a global, interdisciplinary and policy-committed research centre for sustainability and includes a farmers’ organisation as a non-academic secondment partner to maximise the impact of the IF.