The Institute of Aquaculture hosted a PhD AwayDay in December 2022 to enable PhD students (and their supervisors!) to network and share their work and perspectives around the theme “Aquatic Foods in Sustainable Food Systems.” This was organised in collaboration with the The University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University, University of Aberdeen (The Rowett Institute), Lancaster University, University of Cambridge and ThinkAqua.

The formal programme started with a series of 1 minute pitches on key issues, followed by slightly longer insights and perspectives from the awayday leaders. These involved a strong emphasis on transdisciplinarity, highlighting interactions of different disciplines and research approaches. The word cloud below illustrates some of the themes covered.

The remainder of the day involved an advisory session where students were able to talk to any of the advisors present about their research and ask for advice for instance on quantitative social methods, conducting Life Cycle Assessments, undertaking mathematical modelling or nutritional or environmental analysis. The students were then divided into groups to troubleshoot methods in their research with other students, while supervisors moved between groups. A final round-up session summarised the outcomes and discussed the next steps for future collaboration.

The event was considered a great success by those involved, so plans are starting to be made for future collaborations of this kind. Some of the feedback is shown below.

Very interesting to hear from researchers working on food systems and nutrition in the UK (whether their study location is UK or elsewhere). The event felt like it genuinely created a network in this area across a range of institutions. It was interesting to hear about people working on a similar theme, but from a completely different angle (e.g. aquaculture and capture fisheries) - this allowed us to see where there is some overlap between researchers' work and where there may not be.

It was fantastic to meet people in the field, as well as have in person discussions. Looking forward to creating friendships and collaborations to help the field move forward and create actionable items together. It was a fantastic first event, I just hope we can maintain momentum- Teams channel, and hopefully workshops and future collaborations.