Dr John Lever

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Dr John Lever BA (Hons), MSc, PGCHE, PhD

Reader, Sustainable and Resilient Communities

My profile

Biography

John is an interdisciplinary social scientist with a background in sociology, human geography and management. Before moving to MMU, he worked in the Department of Management at the University of Huddersfield, where he was Director of the SURGE Research Centre. Under John’s leadership, SURGE developed a significant programme of funded research, external collaborations, and events.

Before this, John worked in the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University, playing a key role in a number of EU funded projects, including Welfare Quality and Dialrel. He also worked at Cities Research Centre at UWE: Bristol, where he completed an ESRC funded PhD in Public Policy and worked on a number national policy evaluations.

Throughout this period, John’s research interests revolved around sustainable communities and sustainable food systems. His current research interests revolve around sustainable regional food systems, religious food markets, and refugee entrepreneurs. John has been commissioned by a range of NGOs, local authorities, and food certification bodies in the UK and beyond, and has completed work funded by the EU and BA/Leverhulme, among others. The question driving much of his research is: ‘What can food tell us about people, place and politics?’

Before he became an academic, John worked for Oxfam in fair trade for a number of years. 

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BS 5.38 Business School

Impact

John has engaged widely with commercial, public sector, and religious stakeholders.

Through his work on religious food markets, he advises a number of food certification bodies, corporate retailers, and public sector agencies. John’s work with the British Veterinary Association directly influenced policies to make the meat industry more transparent by improving animal welfare at slaughter, preventing meat from non-stunned animals being imported into the UK, and encouraging dialogue with religious communities.

John’s work on sustainable regional food systems in the north of England during the the Covid-19 health pandemic led to work with Public Health England and an invitation to chair the Kirklees Food Partnership in West Yorkshire (2021-2023). This work is continuing through the South Pennines Food Circle, an initiative set up with AHRC Impact Acceleration funding. Another spin off from this work is the Dark Woods Guide to Composting for food service businesses, which has resulted in coffee shops in West Yorkshire and beyond providing compost for local food growing.

John has also run successful public engagement activities to strengthen relationships between micro/small businesses and the communities they serve.

Projects

Selected recent funded and commissioned research:

  • Cooperative Business Impacts, Kirklees Council and the Cooperative Councils Innovation Network (CCIN) with Catherine Brentnall & Gareth Downing (2023-2024)
  • Landscape Recovery: First Round, Natures Holme, Defra (Co-I) (2022-2024)
  • The value of the halal sector from farm to fork to the UK economy, Halal Monitoring Committee (HMC) (PI) (2022-2023)
  • Conscious Composting, with Dark Woods Coffee & Leigh Morland, University of Leeds, CoP26 Legacy Funding (Co-PI) (2022-2023)
  • A Better Future: Understanding Refugee Entrepreneurship (BFURE) BA/Leverhulme (Co-I) (2018-2020)

John has also conducted work funded and supported by The European Commission; The Academy of Marketing; The Office for Civil Society; Kirklees Council; Destitution Concern Bradford; BHA for Equality in Health and Social Care, Manchester; The Dubai [Halal] Accreditation Centre (DAC), and; The Jordanian Hashemite Fund for Human Development (JOHUD).

Teaching

In general, John’s teaching focusses on business and climate change,  animal welfare, circular economy, and food system sustainability. He also has an interest in innovative qualitative research methods.

Supervision

John has supervised 6 PhD students and 2 MSc Research students to completion on topics as diverse as Food Waste in Schools, Halal Supply Chains in Iran, and Fast Fashion. He has examined 9 PhDs. John is interested in supervising students in any of his areas of research interest. His newest student is looking at Circular Economy and Muslim Consumers in the UK.

If you would like discuss PhD study, please get in touch with John or the university directly.

Research outputs

John has published in a range of leading journals, including Sociology, Regional Studies, Cities, Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, and Environment and Planning A, all of which reflect the interdisciplinary nature of his research. He has also given over 60 talks and conference presentations.

John has also published three jointly edited books and a jointly edited book collection; two more jointly edited collections are on the way. Religion, regulation, consumption: Globalising kosher and halal markets (Lever and Fischer, 2018) is in the Manchester Religious Studies collection.