A lecturer from The University of Nottingham is spending September living off the land as part of a ‘living community’ study.

Dr Naomi Sykes in the Department of Archaeology will be joining her partner Dr Richard Jones, a lecturer from the University of Leicester, in spending this month living solely off produce sourced from within a 1.5 mile radius of their Nottinghamshire home.

As part of his work at the renowned Centre for English Local History at the University of Leicester, Dr Jones, a lecturer in Landscape History, is undertaking the project to examine the meaning of locality and community in the 21st century.

Both share an interest in the relationship that develops between people, their animals and crops, wild fauna and flora and the soil, which reflects Dr Sykes’ academic specialty in medieval and earlier food production and consumption.

Together they have designed an organic experiment that will be part of their normal daily life. Rather than spending months filling their stores, the couple have deliberately minimised their preparation; the results will thus be a realistic reflection on their lifestyle, rather than an artificial one.

Although the researchers plan to live off the land, unlike The Good Life Dr Jones stresses that the experiment is not designed to be an exercise in self-sufficiency or ‘back-to-basics’; the couple will not be dependent on themselves but on their local community for support, and will continue to use mains water and refrigeration.

Drs Jones and Sykes will conduct the experiment from their home in Upton, Nottinghamshire. The village has a population of approximately 400. Although they have their own chickens and cultivate a small vegetable patch, they will be largely at the mercy of this community for a month’s supply of food and drink. They anticipate buying milk at the farm gate and have discovered a local source of honey to replace sugar. They also intend to dabble in recipes for nettle tea, dandelion coffee and cider.

Dr Sykes added: “Food is an excellent medium through which to explore the ideas of locality and community both past and present because it has always been so important in the formation of individual and group identities. We all use food to say something about ourselves and we hope that in this experiment food might also offer perspectives on both the people and places we currently share our lives with and also those past communities we study as historians and archaeologists.”

Both Dr Jones and Dr Sykes will maintain all their usual commitments, heading into work every day with their locally-sourced packed lunch. In addition, Dr Jones plans to keep a blog for the duration of the project, whilst Dr Sykes hopes to attract the interest of a filmmaker.