Huge kudos to Erik Mackie and the Cambridge Zero team for an incredibly impressive event. Remarkably they had even managed to arrange for the hottest June day on record in Cambridge to provide a backdrop that so tangibly highlighted the urgency of the subject matter...

The day contained a wealth of research presentations and opportunities for networking and knowledge exchange with other researchers in the climate and nature space.  The huge potential for interdisciplinarity is in some ways a USP of Cambridge, baked into the design of the place for hundreds of years through the college communities – with the caveat that not everyone is a member of a college and/or elects to be involved in their college.  Events like this are therefore essential for fostering interdisciplinary engagement, especially in complex subject areas like climate and preservation of nature.

I would have loved to have seen more content directly related to the food system.  The food system is responsible for between 23-42% of GHG emissions, and it is the leading cause of the current, and first human-induced, mass extinction of species, and also the primary cause of noncommunicable disease, premature deaths and disability-adjusted life years.  However, it rarely gets anything near the focus (prominence in academic and non-academic discourse, funding etc) its substantial and wide-reaching impacts warrant.

This is not in any way a criticism of the organisers or contributors. The symposium provided a very good reflection of the wealth and breadth of brilliant climate and nature-related research that is going on in Cambridge – I would however argue that one high-impact area is underrepresented in that picture here as it is in most other places.

It was therefore encouraging to see that food system challenges featured prominently in the talk outlining opportunities for research and funding for a forward-looking Cambridge. I hope this will translate through to an expanded future for the subject area in this place.

For me such a future could entail strengthening and supporting the current incumbents, most notably the Global Food Systems, University of Cambridge which has been working tirelessly on increasing the holistic engagement with food system challenges in Cambridge.  Could we perhaps see a future where it can host postdoctoral researchers and research projects and offer postgraduate courses (MPhil, MSt, and PhDs) like some other IRCs?  Beyond that I hope to see Cambridge expand its ambitions and engagement with the subject area by embedding critical food system transformation objectives in the priorities of every relevant school and department.

I look forward to hopefully attending next year’s showcase, maybe in an extended format, with even more great content including on the challenges and solutions for a food system that better aligns with the needs of people and the planet, and possibly slightly more clement weather ;)

What a brilliant day I had attending the symposium, witnessing some excellent presentations, and meeting old friends and making new ones.  Especially thrilled to have won the Best ECR Research Poster competition for the poster created in collaboration with the amazing Cecilia Shang, Miriam Remshard, and Joseph Crouch titled 'Consumers and systems: Why sustainable food choices require multi-level change'.  

It is a huge honour to have been selected from a field of excellent contributions.  In our poster we outline our four different research perspectives, and how they come together to paint a picture of the complexities of choice behaviour around food and propose a multi-level engagement with the challenge of shifting behaviours.

11th of March 2026:

I am delighted to announce the release of a lay summary report about my study exploring key barriers and levers for sustainable and healthy dietary transition in the Cambridge college dining halls.  The report is available here: http://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.128279   

I have also just sent my 2026 Conference Poster to print, and I am delighted to share it here too.  It will be seen at various conferences this year, starting with the LEAP Future of Food Conference on the 22nd of April (see upcoming events page), where I hope to be able to discuss my study with diverse academic and non-academic audiences.  The poster is available in high resolution on the University Apollo repository:

https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.128760 

I had a brilliant time joining Dr Robin Strueber to deliver the final talks of this year’s series on the 16th of December.  This was the fourth version of my talk about my research in the Cambridge colleges and the one that most closely summarised the content of the upcoming paper release.  It was thrilling as always to engage with the community of ECRs about my research and the subject matter of healthy and sustainable food.  It is always interesting and often surprising to see what elements of your talk people engage with the most - in this case I have found myself talking a lot about my position on pricing incentives.  You can soon see the talk for yourself and by all means don’t hesitate to reach out if you would like to hear more about any element of my research or discuss any aspect of my analysis or conclusions.

You will be able to see the talk here very soon, if not already:

https://www.youtube.com/@centreforfoodpolicy109/videos

And of  course if you are a researcher that is working on the future of food then please also join the network here:

https://www.phc.ox.ac.uk/research/research-themes/health-behaviours-theme/sustainable-healthy-food-group/thriving/early-career-network-1 

Great day in London hearing about the challenges for food systems transformation from a professional cookery perspective.  And also another opportunity to present the interim results from my research.

A great day of thought-provoking content, including as always a  brilliant input from the legendary Tim Lang <3  I am still digesting.

Amazing day in the beautiful and inspiring surroundings of Lady Margaret Hall in Oxford.

So many phenomenal speakers and content was packed into this one day, including a barnstormer as always from Paul Behrens - with the critical take-away message that we need to keep repeating the key points of our messages about creating a more kind and sustainable food system, because the forces opposing transition certainly are repeating theirs.  It is in the nature of scientific discourse to constantly be looking for new things to reveal and disclose, but we also really need to keep playing our greatest hits!