Monica Truninger is a sociologist with expertise on food and sustainable consumption. Her PhD was on organic food consumption in Portugal (held at the University of Manchester, UK, 2005). Currently she is a research fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences (ICS), University of Lisbon, Portugal. Previous to joining ICS-UL in 2008, she worked in the UK in two research projects: one looking at local foods (within the Rural Economy and Land Use Programme and funded by UK Research Councils, coordinated by a team based in Bangor University) and the other, looking at school meals in the UK and Italy (a ESRC project coordinated by a team based in Cardiff University).

Currently at ICS she develops or participates in projects as varied as renewable energies in rural communities, climate change and coastal erosion, quality construction of terroir products, domestic technologies and cooking practices, school meals, sustainable consumption and public procurement.

She is Principal Investigator of a research project on sustainable public food procurement and school meals (funded by the National Science Foundation in Portugal – FCT/Ministry of Science and Technology). She has published in national and international peer-review journals. Her last book is: O Campo Vem à Cidade: Agricultura Biológica, Mercado e Consumo Sustentável (ICS Press). [The countryside comes to the city: organic farming, market and sustainable consumption].

She is currently finishing a research monograph (Children, Food and Nature: linking the plate and the planet through school meals) together with Dr. Mara Miele (Cardiff University), which is under contract with Ashgate (Series: Critical Food Studies), to be published in 2012.