What Happened This Month | July 2026
Published: 15 July 2026
SCAF is getting ready for its annual event and the restart of all activities, with a refreshed website and a lot of new ideas.
Preparations for the SCAF Annual Event stepped up in July, with abstract review and programme refinement to reflect the breadth of work across the Alliance. Members can still shape the unconference day via the shared Padlet, and registration for in-person and online attendance remains open through the event form. The Early Career Network satellite event is now full, but members can add their name to the waitlist.
The SCAF Member Map continued to grow, with around 40 members now added since launch, extending coverage across sectors, institutions and disciplines. The accompanying blog explains how to use filters to find collaborators, mentors, or specific expertise, and how to add new profiles via the submission form. This makes the Alliance's scale more visible and easier to navigate.
The SCAF "Taste & Tales" recipe and story competition entered its public phase, with winners announced and the book now available to view on the SCAF showcase site. The collection brings together recipes and narratives from across the network, underlining that food in SCAF is as much about lived experience and storytelling as it is about data and technology – the winners across three age groups (under 12s, 12-18 and over 18s) shared their recipes for Clootie Dumplings, Grilled Catfish and Putu Bamboo.
There were also some exciting updates to the team and website. Kate Holmes was confirmed in post as our Digital Communications Officer, adding capacity for web, social media and event communications. Our website also had a little refresh, with a more developed People page going live, showcasing the leadership team, founding members, governance team, SCAF office team, and our ECN working group. Website redevelopment work continued on reorganising the Resources section to better showcase tools such as the member map and dataset aggregator as they come online, as well as our YouTube videos.
In parallel, planning started for the next set of activities beyond the annual event: a data hackathon, a pump‑priming accelerator format, and a webinar with Cris Hasan. Each of these is aimed at testing different ways to support members and their disciplines: from working more intensively with data, focusing on pump‑priming where it can be most effective, and bringing in external perspectives on food systems and equity.
We hope to see many of you at the annual event in August, where we will discuss members' work and what is next in store for SCAF in its final year and beyond.
First published: 15 July 2026