Julie is Professor of Innovation for Sustainable Agriculture at the Countryside and Community Research Institute, University of Gloucestershire, UK. Her main research interests are concerned with Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems. She specialises in understanding advisory services, and facilitating co-innovation in the context of sustainable agriculture, climate change and natural resource protection, with particular reference to soil. She also researches the role of knowledge in socio-technical transition towards sustainable agriculture, for example, through agri-environmental schemes, digital agriculture, minimum tillage, biomass crops and  agroecology.

Julie has applied this understanding to a number of UK research projects on, for example, collaborative agri-environment schemes, achieving net zero in agriculture, translating scientific models. At EU level she has been involved all aspects of stakeholder engagement in Horizon 2020 and FP7 projects (SOLINSA, VALERIE, SmartSOIL, RECARE, SoilCare, AgriDemo-F2F and MINAGRIS). She has also been involved in a number of international initiatives. Julie is an editor of the Journal of Agricultural Education and Extension and sits on the Steering committee for the International Farming Systems Association.

Her keynote presentation dealt with Nature based solutions promise that offers transformative pathways for sustainable agriculture, and new revenue streams for farmers, supply chain, intermediaries and financial institutions. However this has implications for the AKIS and particularly advisory systems. Powerful policy narratives and newly emerging markets (like voluntary carbon markets) have the potential to disrupt the AKIS with reconfigurations of actors and new power relations. Advisers need to negotiate uncertainties and legitimacies around methodologies and mechanism, which places new demands on their professional expertise, while capacity and governance in advisory systems will be challenged to adapt to these arrangements.  

You can click here to download the slides of her presentation.