MRC Epidemiology UnitPhD Student
Global Diet and Physical Activity Research Group and Population Health Interventions
Current work and interests
Anna is a PhD student funded by the UKRI ESRC Doctoral Training Partnership supervised by Dr Louise Foley, Dr Cornelia Guell and Prof. Nigel Unwin. She uses mixed-methods to investigate food acquisition and food sharing practices and their relationships with the local food landscapes, with an aim of understanding facilitators and barriers and identifying intervention points towards food sovereignty and more sustainable, healthy and equitable food systems. Her research is framed in the context of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), with a focus on the Caribbean region.
Anna is particularly interested in anthropological perspectives on food, diets, and the global food system. As such, she was an associate student on the MA Anthropology of Food at SOAS University, where she still regularly participates in the Food Forum of the SOAS Food Studies Centre.
Background and experience
Anna holds a BSc in Chemistry and a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Barcelona. She received a scholarship from Banco Santander to do part of her undergraduate studies at the National University of Litoral in Argentina. After graduating, she spent four years working in biomedical research, first at a start-up company in the Netherlands and then at University College London (UCL). During this time, Anna became interested in population health, which led her to pursue an MSc in Global Public Health Nutrition at the University of Westminster. Her Master’s thesis explored the effects of agroecology and local food production initiatives on food security and nutrition in Cuba. She was awarded The Ignite Fund to collect primary data in the city of Havana using a mixed-methods approach. During her postgraduate studies, she also volunteered at The Food Foundation, The World Public Health Nutrition Association and Made in Hackney, a community cookery school in London.
Prior to starting her PhD, Anna worked as a consultant at WHO on NCD prevention and control, and as a research assistant in the Global Diet and Activity Research Group and Network (GDAR). In this post, Anna worked on a project on community-based food production initiatives in SIDS and their impacts on health, social and economic wellbeing. She also worked across a number of projects involving evidence reviews, policy analysis and citizen science on the determinants of diet and physical activity in Africa and the Caribbean.