MRC Epidemiology UnitResearch Associate
Population Health Interventions
Current work and interests
Kelly is a Research Associate in The Mandala Consortium, which explores the transformation of urban food systems to improve population and planetary health, using a case study of the UK city of Birmingham. The project applies complex systems approaches to map the food system in Birmingham, identify leverage points for systems change and evaluate the impact of strategic actions on the food system. Kelly leads the institutional catering workstream of the project.
Background and experience
Kelly is a qualitative researcher with a background in food policy. She has a Sociology degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Masters in Food & Nutrition Policy, and PhD in Food Policy, from the Centre for Food Policy, City University of London. Her PhD was a comparative policy analysis of attempts to develop a cross-cutting, holistic, national food policy in the UK and Australia, and was part-funded by Australia’s science agency CSIRO.
Her research interests have developed to focus on food systems, and their related policies and governance arrangements. She has a particular focus on efforts to develop more systemic coherent food policymaking, and the different methods and practices which can enabled these.
Prior to joining the University of Cambridge, Kelly worked at the University of Hertfordshire, in its Centre for Agriculture, Food and Environmental Management Research, on a range of projects including on: food systems evidence use for the Food Standards Agency; national food policymaking; food systems approaches and transfomation for the UKRI food systems SPF; and the Horizon 2020 Valumics project on food system network dynamics. Kelly also had a post-doctoral role at the Centre for Food Policy at City University of London, where she worked on a ‘Rethinking Food Policy’ project to conceptualise and operationalise food systems, policy coherence, integration and governance for policy and practice. She is co-author of a tool to support food systems approaches in policy and practice – the ‘food systems flower’ – which has been utilised in a number of reports and programmes, including as the underpinning framework for the £47m UKRI food systems SPF. She led a project on Rethinking Food Governance for the Food Research Collaboration, which explored food systems policymaking responsibilities, policy connectedness, and mechanisms for more connected policymaking. This work has been applied as a framework for understanding food policymaking in a number of reports and papers, including the National Food Strategy Independent Review and in a government select committee report on Food Security.
She has lectured on food systems, policy theory, political economy, policy integration and coherence and governance, and has been an advisor/evaluator on a number of food systems/policy projects, at European and national level.
Before becoming a researcher, Kelly worked as a journalist specialising in food law, policy, and sustainable food, and in civil society, for Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.