
Position: FULL PROFESSOR (PhD in Sociology).
Department: SOCIOLOGY.
Field: Sociology
Adress: Universidad de Oviedo. Departamento de Sociología. Facultad de Economía y Empresa. Edificio Departamental, 2º Planta. Campus de El Cristo. 33006 Oviedo. Asturias (España).
Email: cecilia@uniovi.es
phone: (+34) 985 105 042
Cecilia Díaz-Méndez is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oviedo.
She has been teaching the Sociology of Consumption since 1993 and she is involved in research projects related to the Sociology of Food and Rural Sociology. Since 2000 she has been the director of the research group on Sociology of Food integrated in the Health and Biotechnology Cluster at the Campus of International Excellence of the University of Oviedo (Asturias).
In the last few years she has been the principal researcher in several studies carried out with public funding in the field of food and the social sciences, amongst which stand out “The food away from home in Europe” (2013–2016); “Food Convergences in Europe” (2009–2012); “Mediterranean diet and food practices” (2003–2006) and “Change in food consumption in Spain” ( 2001–2003). She has collaborated with some other researchers from Spanish universities: (UNED, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Universidad de Barcelona, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Universidad Rovira i Virgili, Universidad de Valladolid), as well as some other foreign institutions (University of Manchester and Oxford in the UK, Lille and INRA in France, Naples and Bologna in Italy, Porto and Lisbon in Portugal, Iowa in USA).
She has co-directed two special issues on sociology of food for Spanish social science journals: “Consumo, seguridad alimentaria y salud” together with Gómez Benito (2005) in Revista Internacional de Sociología and “Metodología para el estudio de la alimentación contemporánea” with María Isabel Garcia Espejo, 2014 in Revista Política y Sociedad.
She has also led or collaborated on publications that discuss the future of contemporary food: “Food Consumption and Health” (Fundacion La Caixa, 2008) or “Food in the Spanish society,” in Revista Investigación y Ciencia, a Monograph on Food (2013).
She has also published some of her works in some international journals: a paper analysing the use of time spent on food (British Food Journal, 2014) about the aspects related to the concepts of health and nutrition (Food Policy, 2010); or another on the analysis of food expenditure (International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 2014), all of them aimed at the deep study of the changes in eating habits and practices in contemporary societies .
She has recently performed the National Survey of Food Habits (Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente, 2013) with her colleagues in the research group of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oviedo and has applied her knowledge to social studies, like those on Food in Times of Crisis carried out for the Spanish Red Cross with the support of the Alimerka Foundation (2014) or her more recent collaboration on the Asturias UNICEF report (2015).
Research Fields
Project participation
- La alimentación fuera del hogar en Europa: Un análisis comparado de los modelos alimentarios extradomésticos en España y Reino Unido (2013-2016)
Plan Nacional I+D+I. Ref. CSO2012-31904.
IP.: Cecilia Díaz Méndez
- Convergencia y divergencias alimentarias en Europa. Un análisis comparado de la desestructuración alimentaria en Gran Bretaña y España (2009-2012)
Plan Nacional I+D+I. Refer. CSO2009-07351
IP.: Cecilia Díaz Méndez
Publications
- Díaz-Méndez, C. (2016). Estabilidad y cambio en los hábitos alimentarios de los españoles, Acta Pediátrica Española, 74 (1).
- Díaz Méndez C. y Martínez Suarez V. (2015). “Carencias alimentarias en tiempos de crisis” en Informe UNICEF La infancia en Asturias 2015. Gijón, UNICEF Asturias, pp.48-50
- Díaz Méndez, C. and Garcia Espejo, I. (2014). “Eating practice models in Spain and the United Kingdom: A comparative time-use analysis”, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol. 55(1) 24– 44
- Díaz Méndez, C. and García Espejo, I. (2014). “Eating practice models in Spain and the United Kingdom: a comparative time use analysis”, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, Vol 55 (1) 24-44
- Díaz Méndez, C. y García Espejo, I (2013) “La alimentación fuera del hogar” En: Cecilia Díaz Méndez (Coord.) Hábitos alimentarios de los españoles, Ministerio de Agricultura, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente, pp. 49-63