Project Team
Principal Investigator and Project Lead is Dr Nevena Nancheva at Kingston University London.
Dr Nevena Nancheva is a Migration Studies scholar currently based at Kingston University London’s Centre for Research on Communities, Identities and Difference. She has studied identities and difference through the prism of minority governance in Europe, immigration policies and experiences, and diaspora communities. She has written on national identity narratives, practices and politics of belonging, and migrant integration. In The Ethnic Food Shop Project, Nevena collects life stories of ethnic food entrepreneurs and is keen to explore how ethnic food enterprises can stimulate community inclusion dynamics.
Ms Sarah Sumpter at Kingston University London is Research Assistant.
Ms Richa Gandhi at Kingston University London is Research Assistant.
Dr Hilda Mulrooney at Kingston University London is Project Lead on the Ethnic Food Stories work stream.
Dr Ronald Ranta at Kingston University London is the mastermind behind the idea of studying ethnic food shops and collaborator on the applied research stream.
Our Funding Partners
Kingston University London’s Centre for Research on Communities, Identities and Difference was the first to support our research in 2021. With the CResCID’s crucial help, we set out to study the ways ethnic food shops enable migrant integration . With an explicit focus on migrant communities and migrant food entrepreneurs, we carried out interviews within the Korean community in New Malden near Kingston and with a range of female food entrepreneurs with a migration background in Tottenham, North London.
The Regional Studies Association funded a distinct piece of research on ethnic food shops across the UK and the impact of the pandemic and post-pandemic recovery to be carried out in 2021-22.
The Greater London Authority funded in 2021-22 an applied research project on ethnic food shops and community inclusion. Moving away from the focus on migration, this research explores the way hyper-local communities engage with the ethnic food shops, and how this engagement can be leveraged towards more diverse communities, an increased sense of belonging and better business on the British high street.
The support we have been receiving over the past year by the Design Council has been invaluable in the applied research stream of this project where we design and prototype a community engagement on the basis of ethnic food shops.
