Tomaso Ferrando

Dr. Prof. Tomaso Ferrando holds a PhD in law from Sciences Po University (Paris) and has been visiting a fellow at Harvard University Law School, University of Sao Paulo and the University of Cape Town. Before joining the University of Antwerp, he worked as a Lecturer in Law at the Universities of Warwick School of Law and at the University of Bristol Law School.

Tomaso’s main line of research focuses on the link between law and food, with particular attention to the international dimension (trade, investments and the human right to food) and the implementation of local practices. In his latest academic work, he has focussed on the EU regulation of food waste, on the role of competition law in obstructing coordinated attempts to improve the global food system and on the idea of the food system as a commons (similar to air, water, sun, etc.). He is the co-investigator in a UKRI-AHRC funded project entitled 'Food security at the time of climate change: learning and sharing bottom up experiences from the Caribbean Region' where he works with local and academic partners from Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Belize, Colombia, Antigua and Barbuda and the United Kingdom.

His second line of research concerns the socio-legal-financial construction of Green Bonds as a new/old form of financing that combines the instrument of debt with the desire of building sustainable and green futures. He is the co-investigator of a British Academy funded project that looks at the expansion of the Green Bond market in Brasil from the point of view of local communities and the people who are affected by the realisation of this new round of large-scale development projects.

Outside of academia, Tomaso has been the legal advisor of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2016 to 2020. He is a member of the Legal Committee of the Global Legal Action Network (glanlaw.org) and the Extraterritorial Obligation Consortium (ETOc). He acts as consultant and pro-bono advocate in questions relating to the right to food and food policies. In the last years he has been cooperating with the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) and contributed to the formulation of a EU Common Food policy (to replace the Common Agricultural Policy). He was an active member of both Feeding Coventry and Feeding Bristol, two multidisciplinary stakeholder projects that aim at tackling the roots of food poverty by involving public administrators, private sector and civil society.

Research interests: food systems; global value chains; commons; financialization