Increasingly high-profile research is being undertaken into the socio-environmental challenges associated with the over-production and consumption of food from animals. Transforming food systems to mitigate climate change and hidden hunger, ensure food security and good health all point to reducing animal-based foods as a key lever. Moving beyond animal-based food systems is a societal grand challenge requiring coordinated international research by the social sciences and humanities. A ‘selective openness’ to this range of disciplines has been observed within multi-discipline research programmes designed to address societal grand challenges including those concerned with the sustainability of food systems, inhibiting the impact of social sciences and humanities. Further, existing research on animal-based foods within these disciplines is largely dispersed and focused on particular parts of food systems. Inspired by the ‘Sutherland Method’ this paper discusses the results of an iterative research prioritisation process carried out to enhance capacity, mutual understanding and impact amongst European social sciences and humanities researchers. The process produced 15 research questions from an initial list of 100 and classified under the following five themes: (1) debating and visioning food from animals; (2) transforming agricultural spaces; (3) framing animals as food; (4) eating practices and identities; and (5) governing transitions beyond animal-based food systems. These themes provide an important means of making connections between research questions that invite and steer research on key challenges in moving beyond animal-based food systems. The themes also propose loci for future transdisciplinary research programmes that join researchers from the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities and stakeholders from beyond academia to develop cooperative research and implementation initiatives. The experiences gained from the prioritisation process draw attention to the value of spending time to discuss and collaboratively steer research enquiry into emergent and controversial matters of concern. Fundamental, ethical questions around the continuation or complete cessation of the use of animals for food was a key tension. The positioning of research towards these questions affects not only the framing of the research area but also the partners with whom the research can be carried out and for whom it may be of benefit.

In the age of the Anthropocene, questions of ecological sustainability, animal ethics, and human health are intimately entangled. From a gender perspective, compared to women, men’s diets tend to be less healthy and sustainable. This is linked to worse health outcomes for men. Therefore, alternative, more ethical ways of eating that have the potential to improve men’s health and well-being and simultaneously contribute to better public health and sustainability outcomes should be encouraged. Veganism addresses issues of food, health, climate change, and animal justice simultaneously. This article explores vegan men’s food practices in relation to health and well-being, drawing on qualitative interviews with 61 vegan men. The interview material was analyzed using the method of thematic analysis. Our findings suggest that becoming vegan encourages positive changes in men’s health behavior. This includes paying more attention to nutrition and taking better care of one’s health. Vegan men report experiencing better physical and mental well-being upon going vegan. Based on these findings, we argue that vegan men’s food and health practices contribute to the emergence of healthier masculinities, as vegan men help to challenge links between risky health behavior and masculinity.

This article examines how ethnic minorities negotiate ethnicity-based boundaries and deal with stigmatisation. This is exemplified by the case of the Russianspeaking women in Estonia. To arrive at a more comprehensive understanding of expressions of ethnicity and responses to stigmatisation, we follow an intersectional approach, considering how constructions of ethnicity and reactions to stigmatisation are gendered. This study adds a gender dimension to understanding belonging and the discursive construction of group boundaries by minority groups. We use the 'equalisation strategies' framework developed by Lamont and Bail (2007) to understand how a specific group of Russian-speaking women in Estonia attempt to establish themselves as equal with dominant ethnic groups. Our findings illuminate how, in the Estonian context, claims of belonging can be made and seen as legitimate on the basis of ethnicity rather than stemming from and linked to the discourses of citizenship or civil rights.

Studying elites and, more particularly, privileged men is worthwhile because the favourable position of these individuals and groups in the social hierarchy allows them to make significant material and cultural impact on the world. Often, such an advantage is unearned and involves a sense of entitlement and lack of awareness of being in possession of it. It is therefore crucial to understand how this power operates and is maintained, by disrupting the invisibility of privilege. This chapter addresses methodological issues pertaining to the study of men, masculinities and privilege, drawing on privileged men's career narratives. I focus on a particular methodological problem I encountered when studying the career narratives of male managers from an intersectional perspective: the invisibility of privilege in these accounts. In sociological research, intersectional approaches typically assume identifying socially constructed categories of identity and difference in people's accounts of their experiences and studying relationships between these. However, the narratives of the male managers in question lacked references to social categories (gender, race, class etc.) in their self-descriptions. This chapter explores this problem and discusses some potential methodological solutions and ways forward. Finally, I suggest that some recent cultural changes and transforming gender relations are gradually marking privileged men and masculinities. Masculinity, then, is increasingly emerging from the status of an unmarked category.