Femke Hoekstra
Junior researcher
Rural Sociology, Wageningen University
Hollandseweg 1
6706 KN Wageningen
The Netherlands
Tel. +31 317 483032
femke.hoekstra@no-spam.wur.nl
http://ruralsociologywageningen.wordpress.com

The Foodlinks CoPs

• Short producer to consumer food chains - new relations between civil society and the chain of food provision
• Re-valuing food procurement - new relations between the public sector and the chain of food provision
• Urban food strategies - the rise of municipalities and city-regions as food policy makers, pointing to new relations between the government and civil society

What is a Community of Practice (CoP)?

A Community of Practice (CoP) is a group that evolves or is created specifically based on common interests in a particular field, with the goal of gaining knowledge related to that field. It is through the process of sharing information and experiences within the group that members learn from each other and have an opportunity to develop. Though this type of learning has been going on for centuries, spatial barriers have hindered this type of exchange and therefore new techniques will be experimented with in our project, such as online networking tools.

The three communities of practice the Foodlinks project is exploring have been created specifically for this project with the strong desire that these groups evolve and grow over the length of our project and beyond.