Dianna Smith

Role: Project lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: D.M.Smith@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Behzad Hezarkhani

Role: Project co-lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: b.hezarkhani@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Behzad Hezarkhani is Professor of Operations Management at Southampton Business School, where he leads the Operations and Project Management group and directs the MBA programme. His expertise lies in operations research, mathematical modeling, and game theory, applied to complex challenges in global supply chains. His research spans food and agri-business, logistics, transportation, and production management, with a focus on cooperation and competition within supply chains. Currently, his work concentrates on two areas: international trade and supply chain management, offering both theoretical frameworks and practical insights; and food supply chain waste reduction, developing strategies to minimize food loss through mechanisms such as using imperfect or “ugly” produce. His research has been published in leading journals, including Production & Operations Management and the European Journal of Operational Research, and he has contributed commentary in The Conversation. His scholarship has been recognized with awards such as the 2019 ANZAM and British Academy of Management Collaborative Research Award.

Craig Hutton

Role: Project co-lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: cwh@geodata.soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Ian Waldock

Role: Specialist

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: icw@geodata.soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Ian is a Senior Enterprise Fellow at GeoData, University of Southampton. He is a Software Engineer, Data Scientist and Statistician, with a wide variety of experience in different sectors both as a developer and in project management roles. He has worked implementing software development projects involving web, database, and PC technologies.Examples are designing and implementing database front-ends for bodies such as Natural England, the NHS and Defra. In the area of statistics and data science are projects using deep neural network object-detection techniques to count the number of people on a beach from webcam streams. Also the creation a Bayesian network model of train dwell and travel times along with an interactive web-based interface.

Janis Baird

Role: Project co-lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: jb@mrc.soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Janis’s work aims to improve cardiometabolic health across the lifecourse. Her research incorporates observational studies examining the factors that influence diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity, alongside intervention studies that aim to improve health and nutrition before conception and during pregnancy. An important component of this work is about understanding the how the food environment influences population diet and health and the identification of opportunities for intervention. She works on a study evaluating the effects of food placement within supermarkets on the diets of women and their children. Alongside this, she is using virtual supermarket experiments to gain a deeper understanding of the effects of placement strategies on people’s purchasing patterns.

Jason Sadler

Role: Specialist

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: jds@geodata.soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Jason Sadler is a specialist in GIS and data management, supporting the FAIR-food project in mapping supply chains and visualising the impact of interventions. He ensures the technical implementation of spatial datasets is accurate and supports stakeholder engagement through data-driven insights.

Jenny Baverstock

Role: Project co-lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: j.baverstock@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Jenny is a Principal Enterprise Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences. She has worked in a range of organisations focussing on health. She has a number of research interests covering the four pillars food security. This includes crop production and future sustainable agri systems; climate impacts of foods and future strategies to mitigate these impacts; evaluation of nutrients in food trade and the food environment and access to sustainable, affordable and healthy food in localities in the UK. Jenny is interested in the social dynamics of food supply and sustainability and has co-developed with Southampton City Council, and Dianna Smith, the Southampton Food Partnership. Jenny works with businesses engaged in food production and food supply. She also leads on areas of public engagement for the University of Southampton with a number of public engagement funded projects funded by the University of Southampton.

Mary Barker

Role: Project co-lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: meb@mrc.soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Nisreen Alwan

Role: Project co-lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: n.a.alwan@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Peter Shaw

Role: Project co-lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: p.j.shaw@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Pete is a Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Southampton. He has a wide range of research interests and experience, mostly focusing on novel research that can be applied to make a positive difference. His research on food is largely driven by society's failure to fully eat the food we produce, leading to large quantities of food waste. This food waste represents a failure to make the most of the nutritional value of the food we produce, and a failure to benefit from the land and other resource used to produce it.

Claire Thompson

Role: Project co-lead

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: c.thompson25@herts.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Claire Thompson is a Reader in Food Inequalities and Health in the School of Health, Medicine & Life Sciences at the University of Hertfordshire. Claire completed her PhD in Human Geography at Queen Mary University of London before joining the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, where she worked as a post doc and then undertook a Wellcome Trust Fellowship about food poverty and food aid in London.  Claire joined the University of Hertfordshire in 2020 and is the prevention theme lead for the NIHR Applied Research Collaboration East of England.

Sarah Shaw

Role: Researcher

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: s.c.shaw@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Sarah is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Southampton and a Registered Nutritionist (Public Health). Her research focuses on the impacts of the food systems on health, equity, and environmental sustainability. In her research, she uses both quantitative and qualitative methods to examine how the food environment shapes dietary behaviours, the resulting impacts on health, and opportunities for effective interventions. Sarah completed her PhD in 2023, which explored young people’s use of food outlets by combining GPS tracking, survey data, and focus groups to better understand their independent food choices.

Bethan Prosser

Role: Researcher

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: b.m.prosser@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Bethan Prosser strives to bring academic and community-based practices together to creatively understand and tackle issues of social justice and place. She is a Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, leading on the community research strand of the FAIR project. She has a background in the community voluntary sector, working in a range of frontline and management roles with young people, families, older people, refugees and asylum seekers, Black and racialised minorities, and people experiencing homelessness. Her PhD investigated how listening and sound-based methods could be used to understand residents’ experiences of seaside gentrification along the Sussex coast. She has extensive experience of community-university partnerships, including in her postdoctoral project, through which she collaborated with a community music organisation to co-design participatory soundwalks to engage residents, community groups, and local policymakers in the PhD findings.

Cara Black

Role: PhD student

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: C.Black@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Cara is a first year PhD candidate at the University of Southampton. Her research looks at optimising food aid for young people by involving them in decision-making processes. Prior to starting her PhD, she worked as a Senior Research Assistant at the University of Southampton on several projects focused on engaging young people in healthy behaviours and advocacy. Part of this work involved evaluating and understanding the success of BiteBack’s youth advocacy programme in eliciting changes to food system policy, including the provision of free school meals. As a former co-lead of the NxtGen Researcher Programme she also worked closely with young people in Southampton to train them in research skills and public policy, allowing them to participate in formal decision-making processes through methods of deliberative democracy. Cara has a passion for creative and qualitative methods, participatory action research and youth advocacy.

Annabelle Fisher

Role: Researcher

Institution: University of Southampton

Email: A.R.Fisher@soton.ac.uk

Website: Profile page

Annabelle is a Senior Research Assistant in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Southampton. Her research focuses on exploring food and nutrition security in the UK, with a particular interest in the provision of micronutrients to individuals most at risk of nutritional deficiencies. She is interested how cross-disciplinary approaches can be used to tackle the complex issues that underpin food security across all four pillars: food availability, access, utilisation, and sustainability