The MARE 2025 Conference – People and the Sea XIII, hosted at the University of Amsterdam, marked an important collective moment for Dried Fish Matters (DFM) not only through paper presentations across conference sessions, but also through dedicated spaces for collaboration, synthesis, and forward planning.
Dried Fish Matters (DFM) participants presented their research on dried fish and small fish economies across multiple panels and thematic sessions, reflecting the project’s wide engagement with debates on nutrition, value chains, governance, and climate resilience.
DFM research featured prominently in sessions examining food systems and consumption. Ms. Samia Sobhan, a graduate student at the University of Manitoba, chaired the session on Transforming Sea-Food Connections, where she also presented her DFM research titled “Nutritional Fact, Perception and Consumption of Dried Fish by the Indigenous Garo Population of Bangladesh.” Her paper highlighted how nutrition, cultural perceptions, and everyday consumption practices shape the role of dried fish in Indigenous food systems.
Questions around industrial pressures on small fish were taken up in the panel “‘Scraping the bottom and scooping the top’ – dynamics and processes of aquafeed value chains.” In this session, Dr. Amalendu Jyotishi, Ms. Colleen Cranmer, and Mr. Sami Naim Farook drew on DFM research to discuss how the expansion of the Fish Meal and Fish Oil (FMFO) industry is diverting small fish away from human consumption, with significant implications for nutrition security, livelihoods, and climate risk in small-scale fisheries.
Ms. Raktima Ghosh, DFM PhD candidate at IIT Kharagpur, further extended these conversations through her presentation titled “On the edge of ‘spacetime’: ‘Gendered’ renderings in dried fish production in the Indian Sundarbans,” delivered as part of the session Gender Transformations for Sustainable Coastal Livelihoods.
DFM’s engagement at MARE 2025 also extended to broader discussions on small fish and climate change. Dr. Derek Johnson presented ongoing work from the Reimagined Food Systems – Small Fish for Climate Change (SFCC) project as part of the panel “The value of small: Supporting small-scale actors, nutrition provision, and climate resilience through African small fish value chains.” The presentation situated SFCC within wider conversations on the importance of small fish for resilient food systems, building on insights generated through DFM’s long-term research.
Ahead of the main conference, DFM convened a Working Group 1 (WG1): Gender and Social Economy synthesis paper writing workshop, focused on developing a shared plan, timeline, and conceptual framework for the WG1 synthesis paper. The workshop was held in a hybrid format, with in-person participation by Derek Johnson, Holly Hapke, Nireka Weeratunge, and Raktima Ghosh, and online participation by Nikita Gopal, Wae Win Khaing, Mohammad Anas Shoebullah Khan, Tara Nair, and Kyoko Kusakabe. The workshop provided a focused space to align analytical directions, discuss the scope and structure of the paper, and strengthen coherence across the diverse empirical contributions emerging from DFM’s gender-focused research in South and Southeast Asia.
Beyond DFM, the MARE conference also created space for cross-project exchange. On a separate but closely connected track, the conference served as an opportunity to convene partners from the Reimagined Food Systems – Small Fish for Climate Change (SFCC) project for a dedicated methodology workshop. The Reimagined Food Systems project is funded funded by the NFRFI, and its SFCC component builds directly on DFM’s ongoing research, alongside the work of partner initiatives such as SmallFishForFood in Africa. Bringing together teams working along India’s west coast and in African contexts, the workshop focused on deliberating and aligning the project’s methodological approach, ensuring comparability while remaining attentive to local contexts.
Taken together, MARE 2025 functioned as more than a conference venue for DFM and its partner projects. It provided a critical space to move between presentation, synthesis, and methodological consolidation, reinforcing the connection between DFM’s long-term research on dried fish and small fish economies and newer, forward-looking collaborations on food systems and climate change.