Profile
Alice is a Food System Analysis Researcher in the Food Systems Group at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. She is involved with the Co-Centre for Sustainable Food Systems, a large-scale interdisciplinary research programme which works collaboratively with academics, industry stakeholders, government and policymakers across the United Kingdom and Ireland. The research aims to deliver innovative solutions to drive societal and political change in the transition to climate neutrality by 2050. Alice is working on developing an updated food system conceptual framework and analysing the island of Ireland’s food system activities and outcomes.
Before joining the ECI, Alice researched school food at Cardiff Metropolitan University (funded by Public Health Wales). She explored the feasibility of using secondary school canteen sales datasets to understand what pupils purchase; and, developed an assessment tool and analysed all available school menus pan-Wales. This post closely aligned to Alice’s PhD at the same institution (funded by Knowledge Economy Skills Scholarships). The PhD took a mixed-methods approach (participatory design research, observation, interviews, focus groups, sales data analysis) to determine the factors influencing young Welsh adolescents’ vegetable intake. The PhD industry partner was the largest vegetable producer in Wales and Alice worked on vegetable-based snacking concepts.
Additionally, she has worked at Ulster University in Belfast to assist small- and medium-sized agri-food firms in their usage of market intelligence (i.e., Dunnhumby, Kantar) to improve their Tesco listings in Northern Irish stores. Research in this post consisted of a follow-up longitudinal study measuring the impact of market intelligence access on new product development; and, supermarket buyer relationships with small agri-food firms in Northern Ireland. Alice holds a MSc Marketing degree from the University of Kent.