Our team Leadership team

Dr Rebecca Wells

Senior Lecturer in Food Policy

Rebecca is a Senior Lecturer in Food Policy in the Centre for Food Policy at City, University of London and the Programme Director for the Centre’s MSc in Food Policy. Her research focuses on the interactions between food policy and the media, and developing food policy for a healthier, more sustainable and equitable food system. She has a particular interest in the pedagogy of food systems and was made a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in 2018.  Rebecca’s current research projects reflect her research interests. She is a Co-I on the HEALTHEI (Health Economic Analysis incorporating effects on Labour outcomes, Households, Environment and Inequalities for food taxes) project, leading an analysis of media coverage of food taxes. She is a Co-I on the Transforming UK Food Systems Centre for Doctoral Training.

A former BBC producer and food journalist, Rebecca joined the BBC in 1991 working on a variety of programmes including investigative and consumer output for BBC Radios 1, 2, 3, 4 and the World Service, before becoming a producer on BBC Radio 4’s The Food Programme in 1999. She produced dozens of documentaries for the Food Programme, on topics including food policy, food culture, food history, nutrition, environmental sustainability and food education.

Email: rebecca.wells.1@city.ac.uk

Professor Ioan Fazey

Director of Strategy for the Department of Environment and Geography

Ioan is Professor of the Social Dimensions of Environment and Change and Director of Strategy for the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York. His research focuses on how to steward transformations to regenerative futures and bring about the systemic kinds of changes needed to overcome 21st century challenges like climate change. This includes researching and asking deep questions about how our knowledge systems – universities, research institutes, and the way we go about learning in complex environments – need to transform to support wider societal transformations to sustainability. Ioan has over 70 research publications in knowledge, resilience, transformations and sustainability. He actively supports and facilitates a growing field of research, teaching and action associated with transformation, including being a founding member and steward of the SDG Transformation Forum, co-founder of the Transformations Conference Series and trustee of H3uni.org – the action oriented organisation promoting transformative thinking and building capacity for working within a rapidly changing world.

Email: ioan.fazey@york.ac.uk

Professor Lisa Collins

Professor of Animal Science

Lisa is Head of the School of Biology, Professor of Animal Science, N8 Agrifood Chair in Agricultural Systems, Director of the National Pig Centre and Deputy Director of the Global Food and Environment Institute at the University of Leeds. Her research focuses on the development and application of smarter agricultural systems through multi-disciplinary approaches including technology development, systems modelling and data analytics. Amongst a broad portfolio of active research projects, Lisa is PI on PIGSustain, a £2.06m Global Food Security programme grant.

Lisa serves on national and international advisory, funding and academic society councils and strategy groups, including BBSRC, the Dog Advisory Council, ASAB council, and European Food Safety Authority groups. She is an experienced public communicator of science, regularly presenting invited public lectures including at the Royal Institution and in national theatres.  Her work regularly features in national and international news media in all formats.  In 2014, she received the British Science Association Charles Darwin Award for excellence in science communication, and in 2010, the UFAW Young Animal Welfare Scientist of the Year award.  In 2020, she was elected as a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and is the British Science Association Section President for Agriculture and Food for 2021.

Email: L.Collins@leeds.ac.uk

Dr Michelle Cain

Lecturer in Environmental Analytics

Michelle’s core expertise is in greenhouse gases, air pollution and climate science. Her current research focuses on the role of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide in limiting global warming, consistent with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal. In particular, how to estimate the temperature outcomes from reducing methane emissions. Agricultural emissions are dominated by methane and nitrous oxide, both potent greenhouse gases. However methane’s lifetime in the atmosphere is around a decade, whereas nitrous oxide’s is over a century, and so methods of comparison must account for this to be accurate over all timescales.

Before joining Cranfield in 2020, Michelle was a senior researcher at the University of Oxford, where she developed the Oxford Martin Programme on Climate Pollutants, which aimed to make climate metrics used in climate policy more fit-for-purpose. She held two University of Oxford Knowledge Exchange Fellowships, on agricultural climate mitigation.

As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge (2009-2017), Michelle worked on modelling the sources of pollution measured by the Cranfield-based FAAM research aircraft. She took part in conducting large field campaigns to the Arctic to measure methane in the atmosphere, linking these measurements back to sources such as remote wetlands. Other field campaigns targeted UK air pollution, and fugitive methane from North Sea gas rigs.

Her PhD, from the University of Reading, combined airborne measurements with modelling of long range transport of pollutants in the atmosphere from North America to Europe, and also in the West African Monsoon.

Photo credit: David Fisher

Email: Michelle.Cain@cranfield.ac.uk