Living Labs, Leverage Points, and International Networks: A Transdisciplinary, Multi-Level Perspective for Sustainable European Food Systems: Transdisciplinary PhD Dissertation on Sustainable Food Systems

While societies have the technology and resources to ensure food for all, collective cognitive dissonance perpetuates the denial of fundamental food rights. Transforming the Food System requires a clearer transition framework, emphasizing multi-actor efforts, bottom-up interventions, and targeted leverage points to drive systemic change. This dissertation begins with an in-depth review of text- and visual-based definitions of Food Systems. Rather than introducing new definitions, it adopts a harmonized approach that embraces existing definitions, emphasizing key components and unique additions to highlight the universal inclusivity of Food Systems. The current state of Food Systems is critically evaluated across three dimensions: environmental (rampant climate-related effects including approximately 30% of the EU’s carbon emissions attributed to food), health (unhealthy diets causing mortality rates comparable to smoking in Europe), and social (failure to uphold basic food rights). Recognizing the urgent need for a Sustainable Food System Transformation, the study investigates various drivers of change and conceptual models, grounding its analysis in holistic perspectives such as systems thinking, leverage point frameworks, and social entropy theory. Although not a perfect fit, the Multi-Level Perspective (MLP) is acknowledged as a flexible and robust conceptual model capable of explaining the complexities of sustainable Food System transformation. Next, the dissertation is structured around four interventions informed by three lead-author publications:
• Transforming European Food Systems with Multi-Actor Networks and Living Labs through the FoodSHIFT Approach
• Holistic Advisory Tool to Evaluate and Enhance Sustainable Food Procurement Practices in Professional Kitchens
• Citizen Engagement in Public Food Procurement: A Novel Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Canteen Campaign Case Study
The study revisits the MLP framework with literature based adjustments primarily based on the original author’s response to critiques in an attempt to align the Revised MLP (rMLP) with its original in both content and style. This revised rMLP forms the foundation for integrating the FoodSHIFT approach, Living Labs, and leverage points including both public food procurement and citizen engagement initiatives. Subsequent sections re-evaluate research questions and study limitations, revealing systemic barriers to sustainable change, primarily economic and justice-related challenges. These barriers underscore the failure of political systems to address inequality and concentrated ownership. The dissertation returns once more to adjust create and Expanded Multi-Level Perspective (eMLP) which incorporates insights from the author’s experiences attempting to enact change in face of regime reinforcing mechanisms including economic injustice and power imbalances that pose persistent barriers to not only Sustainable Food System transformation, but also broader sustainable societal change. This dissertation ultimately provides a theoretical interpretation in the Expanded Multi-Level-Perspective suitable to explain complex Food System Transformation initiatives while simultaneously identifying and highlighting the large barriers to change that underpin our societies.