Mr Dominic Watters

Dominic Watters comes from the most deprived blocks of his council estate. He has used his experience of the daily realities of poverty to help inform discussions about fuel and food insecurity in the UK. In this way he occupies the unique position of both being a member of an impoverished community and also an advocate for the same community and too many like it. After many requests to speak about his lived experience, Dominic developed the concept of “living experience” (Watters, D. p5 2021) to stress the urgency and tensions of the inequalities faced by so many. Through his campaign and now CIC, Food is Care, Dominic identified gaps in social work frameworks and worked tirelessly to raise awareness of the professions’ shortcomings towards the most disadvantaged in society. His impactful appearances on BBC Newsnight, Sky News, the New Statesman, and Dutch national 6 o’clock news have shown him to use every platform he can access to speak up for the marginalised and often unheard. After giving evidence to the House of Lords, Food, Diet and Obesity Select Committee live on Parliament TV, Dominic’s words are heavily quoted in the resulting Recipe for Health: How to Fix Our Broken Food System report (2024-25). Now widely regarded as a voice of poverty, Dominic found a new home at the University of Southampton where he is writing his PhD, whilst also working as a community-based research fellow on a project, funded by UKRI / DEFRA, looking at in building UK food system resilience.