These are my people. Team Sustainability forever! Wait…no, I mean lifelong friends, not lifelong students. Please.

Part of the MSc Sustainability program is a core module called Research Training and Project Planning. For Dr. Mark Cutler and Dr. Ioan Fazey, we proposed and created a research proposal as practice for our dissertation.

Our class split into two groups of three and each had our own go at what I would call research to prepare for research. The projects we chose stemmed from common backgrounds and addressed issues relevant in Scotland and beyond. While these were only hypothetical research proposals, they were developed with such detail that they could be formally carried out if desired.

Between the two groups, there was a competition to see which project would win the imaginary pot of money to have our research ‘funded.’

My group and I found a common interest pertaining to urban agriculture and food security. Through our interests and our desire to address concerns in environmental, economic, and social realms, we created a research proposal called Growing A Sustainable Urban Food Supply (GASUFS).

GASUFS looked at the positive and negative impacts of urban agriculture on UK cities, identified potential for implementation, and was guided in part by US-based case studies.

Did someone say field trip?! To switch things up, the location for the presentations did not take place on campus. We travelled to the Centre for Stewardship at the Falkland Estate where we spent the day presenting our work, hiking through the beautiful grounds, participating in dissertation workshops, and listening to an ethics presentation from Dr. Ed Hall.

Team GASUFS walked away with the win (!!!), but the day was about more than the competition. We all walked away with a broader understanding of research methods and brushed up on our presentation skills; two things that will come in handy in these months leading up to our final MSc Sustainability deadline.