Bhavna Middha
Biographic Data
| ID | 1810018 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bhavna Middha |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bhavna |
| FAMILY NAME | Middha |
| SIGNATURE | MIDDHA B |
| AFFILIATIONS | RMIT University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6501-6124 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Developing a capabilities-based low carbon transition framework
Low carbon dwelling improvements combine upgrades to thermal envelopes and appliances with renewable energy systems. Despite proven cost-effective options for emissions reductions and quality of life enhancements, widespread adoption remains elusive. Instead, such projects are often isolated, with uneven distribution across locations, housing contexts and socio-economic groups. Many literature and stakeholder-informed models of upscaling low carb…
Healthy’ food practices
Towards housing retrofit as care infrastructure
Rhythms of recycling
What’s (not) on the digital food menu
Freezing time, freezing in time
Considering that many fresh food items require domestic cold storage, understanding the role of appliances such as freezers is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions relating to domestic food waste and energy use. Using a social practices approach, this article reports on a study of cold storage and food waste practices, particularly freezing relating to meat, in 20 Australian households. Householders were interviewed twice, over winter an…
It's not as easy as ‘heat or eat’ - Exploring the intersecting vulnerabilities of energy and food in domestic practices in Australia
Research into food insecurity and energy vulnerability has framed the dilemma of heat or eat as a choice between nutritious food and adequate energy service determined by financial constraints. However, recent reviews of connections between energy poverty and other socio-economic disadvantages have found that the literature lacks an understanding of the nuances and lived experiences of intersecting hardships. In response to this agenda, this pape…
Urban Food Infrastructures
Urban food infrastructures are oft-forgotten as crucial for sustainability transitions. This ethnographic case study explores the eating spaces of an inner-city university to assess its sustainability outcomes. By considering knowledge as embedded in and through social practices as “general understandings”, the paper argues that the neo-liberal organisation of eating spaces understands campus spaces as assets, conceives students as individualisti…
High-rise plastic
Plastic is a persistent problem in westernised cities. Yet it is also a key mediator, affording and assisting the everyday. In small apartments, it supports daily life by assisting with waste management, storage, and provisioning of affordable ornaments and furniture. Plastic, in this context, is a mundane and utilitarian substrate to apartment life, as well as being a problematic potential pollutant. Recognising the diverse contributions to rese…
Expectations and realities of digital public spaces
This article analyses expectations and experiences of digital public spaces that facilitate community engagement with urban planning. While viewing digital spaces as part of an expanding repertoire of public spaces and events – physical and digital – that signify the participatory turn in municipal governance, we argue that local officials and residents are overly optimistic about the democratic and administrative capacities of the digital sphere…
Using the capability approach to evaluate energy vulnerability policies and initiatives in Victoria, Australia
Energy vulnerability is a multi-dimensional, dynamic and context-specific phenomenon that poses a challenge for equity in energy transition policies. The Capability Approach (CA) is a normative framework focused on people’s opportunities and freedoms, used to address dimensions of social justice. Whereas the CA has been used to assess and measure conditions of poverty, exclusion and inequality, its application to evaluate policies is rare. Buildi…
Man caves, granny flats and alternative living spaces
Pop-up food provisioning as a sustainable third space
We examine one innovative response to the social, spatial and environmental sustainability challenges posed by food provisioning and consumption for large-scale organisations—pop-up or mobile food provisioning—focusing on the specific example of a large, inner urban university campus in Melbourne, Australia. Emerging from a larger project examining sustainability and eating practices on campus, this study of pop-ups draws on a multi-method empiri…
Spatio-temporalities of convenience eating for sustainability outcomes at an inner-urban university
This article addresses questions about sustainability outcomes and the convenience-oriented eating practices that tend to dominate some urban universities and that are largely associated with intensive resource and energy consumption. Instead of considering food consumption on campus as a product of individual behaviours and choices (commonly the normative frame for provisioning of eating sociospatial infrastructures), we use social practice theo…
Spaces of capability
Inner-city universities are noteworthy in relation to food provisioning and consumption because of their locations and spatial characteristics. Among 18,500 university students surveyed by Universities Australia in 2017, one in seven reports being unable to eat in regular patterns. This finding suggests that it is important to explore how eating spaces at inner-city universities intersect with students' eating practices. Ethnographic work conduct…
It's not as easy as ‘heat or eat’ - Exploring the intersecting vulnerabilities of energy and food in domestic practices in Australia
Research into food insecurity and energy vulnerability has framed the dilemma of heat or eat as a choice between nutritious food and adequate energy service determined by financial constraints. However, recent reviews of connections between energy poverty and other socio-economic disadvantages have found that the literature lacks an understanding of the nuances and lived experiences of intersecting hardships. In response to this agenda, this pape…
High-rise plastic
Plastic is a persistent problem in westernised cities. Yet it is also a key mediator, affording and assisting the everyday. In small apartments, it supports daily life by assisting with waste management, storage, and provisioning of affordable ornaments and furniture. Plastic, in this context, is a mundane and utilitarian substrate to apartment life, as well as being a problematic potential pollutant. Recognising the diverse contributions to rese…
Man caves, granny flats and alternative living spaces
Spaces of capability
Inner-city universities are noteworthy in relation to food provisioning and consumption because of their locations and spatial characteristics. Among 18,500 university students surveyed by Universities Australia in 2017, one in seven reports being unable to eat in regular patterns. This finding suggests that it is important to explore how eating spaces at inner-city universities intersect with students' eating practices. Ethnographic work conduct…
Spatio-temporalities of convenience eating for sustainability outcomes at an inner-urban university
This article addresses questions about sustainability outcomes and the convenience-oriented eating practices that tend to dominate some urban universities and that are largely associated with intensive resource and energy consumption. Instead of considering food consumption on campus as a product of individual behaviours and choices (commonly the normative frame for provisioning of eating sociospatial infrastructures), we use social practice theo…
Spaces of capability
Inner-city universities are noteworthy in relation to food provisioning and consumption because of their locations and spatial characteristics. Among 18,500 university students surveyed by Universities Australia in 2017, one in seven reports being unable to eat in regular patterns. This finding suggests that it is important to explore how eating spaces at inner-city universities intersect with students' eating practices. Ethnographic work conduct…
Expectations and realities of digital public spaces
This article analyses expectations and experiences of digital public spaces that facilitate community engagement with urban planning. While viewing digital spaces as part of an expanding repertoire of public spaces and events – physical and digital – that signify the participatory turn in municipal governance, we argue that local officials and residents are overly optimistic about the democratic and administrative capacities of the digital sphere…
Using the capability approach to evaluate energy vulnerability policies and initiatives in Victoria, Australia
Energy vulnerability is a multi-dimensional, dynamic and context-specific phenomenon that poses a challenge for equity in energy transition policies. The Capability Approach (CA) is a normative framework focused on people’s opportunities and freedoms, used to address dimensions of social justice. Whereas the CA has been used to assess and measure conditions of poverty, exclusion and inequality, its application to evaluate policies is rare. Buildi…
Man caves, granny flats and alternative living spaces
Pop-up food provisioning as a sustainable third space
We examine one innovative response to the social, spatial and environmental sustainability challenges posed by food provisioning and consumption for large-scale organisations—pop-up or mobile food provisioning—focusing on the specific example of a large, inner urban university campus in Melbourne, Australia. Emerging from a larger project examining sustainability and eating practices on campus, this study of pop-ups draws on a multi-method empiri…
Spatio-temporalities of convenience eating for sustainability outcomes at an inner-urban university
This article addresses questions about sustainability outcomes and the convenience-oriented eating practices that tend to dominate some urban universities and that are largely associated with intensive resource and energy consumption. Instead of considering food consumption on campus as a product of individual behaviours and choices (commonly the normative frame for provisioning of eating sociospatial infrastructures), we use social practice theo…
Urban Food Infrastructures
Urban food infrastructures are oft-forgotten as crucial for sustainability transitions. This ethnographic case study explores the eating spaces of an inner-city university to assess its sustainability outcomes. By considering knowledge as embedded in and through social practices as “general understandings”, the paper argues that the neo-liberal organisation of eating spaces understands campus spaces as assets, conceives students as individualisti…
High-rise plastic
Plastic is a persistent problem in westernised cities. Yet it is also a key mediator, affording and assisting the everyday. In small apartments, it supports daily life by assisting with waste management, storage, and provisioning of affordable ornaments and furniture. Plastic, in this context, is a mundane and utilitarian substrate to apartment life, as well as being a problematic potential pollutant. Recognising the diverse contributions to rese…
It's not as easy as ‘heat or eat’ - Exploring the intersecting vulnerabilities of energy and food in domestic practices in Australia
Research into food insecurity and energy vulnerability has framed the dilemma of heat or eat as a choice between nutritious food and adequate energy service determined by financial constraints. However, recent reviews of connections between energy poverty and other socio-economic disadvantages have found that the literature lacks an understanding of the nuances and lived experiences of intersecting hardships. In response to this agenda, this pape…
Freezing time, freezing in time
Considering that many fresh food items require domestic cold storage, understanding the role of appliances such as freezers is critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions relating to domestic food waste and energy use. Using a social practices approach, this article reports on a study of cold storage and food waste practices, particularly freezing relating to meat, in 20 Australian households. Householders were interviewed twice, over winter an…
Towards housing retrofit as care infrastructure
Rhythms of recycling
What’s (not) on the digital food menu
Developing a capabilities-based low carbon transition framework
Low carbon dwelling improvements combine upgrades to thermal envelopes and appliances with renewable energy systems. Despite proven cost-effective options for emissions reductions and quality of life enhancements, widespread adoption remains elusive. Instead, such projects are often isolated, with uneven distribution across locations, housing contexts and socio-economic groups. Many literature and stakeholder-informed models of upscaling low carb…
Healthy’ food practices
Sociology (10 works) · Political science (8 works) · Business (7 works) · Engineering (6 works) · Geography (6 works) · Social science (6 works) · Public relations (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works) · Ecology (4 works) · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism (4 works)