Meet our second ECR board. The Network mentors and invests in early career researchers by appointing a new ECR board annually. ECRs are mentored by senior team members and work closely with our Champions.
Meet our second ECR board. The Network mentors and invests in early career researchers by appointing a new ECR board annually. ECRs are mentored by senior team members and work closely with our Champions.
Ashraf Alkhtib has a PhD in animal nutrition. He worked for 8 years as a research assistant in the general commission of agricultural research, Syria with main focus on utilisation of agricultural by-products as animal feed. He is currently working as a research fellow in Nottingham Trent University, Poultry research unit.
Albert Boaitey is a Lecturer in Global Agri-food Supply Chains at the Centre for Rural Economy, Newcastle University. Trained as an agricultural economist, he specializes in sustainable livestock systems, ethical food choice and food supply chain stakeholders’ net zero transitions. He holds a PhD from the University of Alberta.
Find out more about Albert on his University Web page
Martin is research associate in the department of Food and Nutrition at Reading University. He has a background in crop genetics and formerly worked as a plant breeder developing fruit and vegetable varieties for North Africa and Europe.
His current research is in the food systems and supply chain space, working as a business liaison in FoodSEqual, improving shelf life of leafy vegetables, and development of niche crop products. www.linkedin.com/in/martin-chadwick-42162258
Peter Gittins is a Lecturer in the Centre for Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Studies within the management department at LUBS. He has a practical working background in farm management, helping to run his family-owned livestock farm in West Yorkshire.
Peter has an inter-disciplinary research background exploring ‘Constrained Entrepreneurship in the English Uplands’ as part of his PhD at the University of Huddersfield. Peter’s research interests are centred around agricultural business management, specifically rural entrepreneurship and approaches to strategic management in farming businesses. Peter’s University webpage
Pan is the Lecturer in Environmental Science and Sustainability at Cardiff University. Her work focuses on evaluating the environmental and social impacts of household food consumption and conducting quantitative environmental and climate policy analysis in countries with various development levels.
She is keen to work with interdisciplinary scholars to explore dietary changes to address global sustainable challenges such as climate change and resource depletion.
Kelly is an entomologist working on the design of cropping systems and landscapes to reconcile crop and livestock production with biodiversity and ecosystem services. She has a particular interest in the functional biodiversity of carabid and dung beetles, and working with farmers to apply her research.
Kelly completed her PhD on the modelling of carabid beetle distributions in farm landscapes towards effective natural-enemy pest control. She has a masters in Global Food Security and Development, and a degree in Environmental Conservation. She has expertise in agricultural entomology, forestry, agricultural systems, and communications.
Hermann is a policy analyst at the Institute for European Environmental Policy, working within the CAP and Food team. He has an active interest in better understanding the intersections between policy, land use and ecosystems in the UK;
specifically seeking to incorporate a more interdisciplinary approach to examining the synergies and conflicts between agri-environmental policies, the farming sector and conservation efforts in the UK countryside. Hermann’s LinkedIn page
Arina Machine is a second-year PhD student at the University of Leicester. She looks at remote sensing applications to identify agroforestry and quantify its carbon outputs across the United Kingdom. She is interested in the application of big data to solve environmental and agricultural questions. Outside of her studies she co-founded the AgriTech business AkoFresh […]
Find out more about Arina on her University web page.
James is a sheep farmer from Northern Ireland, and a Lecturer in Beef Production Systems at Harper Adams University, Shropshire. His research interests involve dairy and beef cattle, with a focus on feed efficiency, trace element nutrition, and metabolomics.
Rosario is a Lecturer in Sustainability and Business in the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, UK. Her research interests lie at the intersection of food supply chains and sustainability, with a primary focus on driving change towards more sustainable and resilient enterprises and food supply chains.
Rosario has been actively engaged in research projects exploring the impact of digitalisation on improving logistics and resilience in short food supply chains, specifically focusing on the Global South and emerging economies. Rosario’s University web page
Cynthia is a University Academic Fellow at the University of Leeds, having completed her PhD at the university of Leeds, where she investigated the improvement of biomethane yield and biogas quality from food waste AD using sequential process optimisation and biomethanation.
She continues her research supporting the BBSRC funded project on Bioenergy, Fertiliser and Clean Water from Invasive Aquatic Macrophyte (BEFWAM) and the Gates Foundation project on Climate Change and Sanitation; Assessing Resilience and Emissions (SCARE). In 2022 she was awarded the BBSRC Discovery Fellowship to investigate the production of low-carbon, high-grade biomethane from food waste for use as a vehicle fuel.
Lorena is a research plant pathologist in the Cell & Molecular Sciences department at the James Hutton Institute in Dundee, Scotland. Her research focuses on the foliar microbiome of agricultural crops or their wild progenitors and how phytopathogenesis impacts community structure.
In particular, she is interested in investigating the potential to exploit the foliar and endophytic microbiome for tailored disease control of plant pathogenic bacteria and fungi. www.linkedin.com/in/lorenairangel/
Philippa is an environmental social scientist with a background in clinical medicine, based at the University of Gloucestershire. Her current research focuses on discourses around ruminant methane emissions and how these are manifested as on-farm strategies.
She is interested in deliberative democracy, climate governance, and how we might achieve a just transition towards a sustainable agri-food system. Philippa’s University web page
Emmanuel is a lecturer in Environmental Management and sustainability at the Royal Agricultural University. He is interested in sustainable farming landscape transformations, environmental justice, payment for ecosystem services and utilisation of indigenous knowledge and species for food security and climate adaptation.
His expertise is in agroforestry systems, value chain development, species distribution modelling and design of payment for ecosystem services.
