Our team

Professor Jonathan Rushton

Director of the Centre
Professor of Animal Health and Food Systems Economics (N8 Chair), Institute of Infection and Global Health

Jonathan Rushton is an agricultural economist who has worked in animal health and rural development in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America. His work focuses on the burden of animal diseases, and the assessment and management of food systems in order to improve human health outcomes.

He is particularly concerned about the need for food systems that generate a balance between reasonable incomes for people working in the food system and the access of quality food and good diets for all people. Such balanced food systems should help to reduce levels of over and under nutrition, and improve livelihoods, particularly in rural areas.

Professor Andy Morse

Professor of Climate Impacts,
School of Environmental Sciences

Andy Morse's interests are in climate variability and climate change impacts on sustainable food systems. This can range from weather disruption to agricultural operations and supply chains, to the use of climate data for seasonal crop yield and animal disease risk, and finally impacts of long term climate change on infrastructure, future animal husbandry, and future crop use.

Professor Andy Lyons

Professor in Operations and Supply Chain Management,
Management School

Andy Lyons is Professor of Operations & Supply Chain Management. He has wide-ranging expertise in procurement, operations and logistics systems. In the food sector, he has particular research interests in ‘liquid lean’ – the development of lean thinking strategies in process-focused manufacturers, the supply chain performance effects of regulatory frameworks, and the analysis of strategic alignment across supply chains.

Professor Sarah O'Brien

Professor of Infection Epidemiology and Zoonoses,
Institute of Psychology Health and Society

Sarah O’Brien is Professor of Infection Epidemiology and Zoonoses and Director of the National Institute for Health Research Health Protection Research Unit in Gastrointestinal Infections. Her interests are in food preparation, hygiene and safety, in particular the food poisoning inducing Campylobacter virus found in undercooked meat.

Professor Diana Williams

Institute of Infection and Global Health

Diana Williams is a veterinary parasitologist with interest in controlling parasitic diseases in sheep and cattle. Her major research area is on improving the control of liver fluke through improved diagnostics, reducing transmission and more targeted use of flukicide drugs. Her team’s research is funded by BBSRC, EU and the farming industry through the meat and milk levy boards.

Professor Georgina Endfield

APVC Research and Impact (Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences),
Professor of Environmental History,
Department of History

Georgina Endfield’s research interests focus on environmental and climate history and historical climatology. She has investigated cultural perceptions and attitudes to climate and climate change debates, climate change risk communication, public engagement strategies for eliciting popular weather memories and narratives in a UK context and is currently leading a major cross institutional project on extreme weather histories across the UK.

Georgina’s expertise is in the use of historical records and sources for the reconstruction of climate variability and its implications. She has drawn on a variety of sources and oral history approaches to investigate the histories of climate variability in a variety of spatial and temporal contexts in Mexico, to explore the timing, impacts of and responses to extreme weather events across the UK and to explore the role of place in weather memory. She has also conducted research into historical climate variability, and associated socio economic implications in southern Africa and the relationship between climate and health in 19th Century East Africa.

Dr Peter Walley

Lecturer in Genetics and N8 AgriFood Fellow,
Institute of Integrative Biology

Peter Walley’s research interests focus on vegetable crop genetic improvement, applying trait genetics and plant breeding to address the growing needs of sustainable intensification for food security and improved nutrition. He has a particular interest in the use of landrace and crop wild relatives as sources of genetic variation that can be incorporated into pre-breeding material suitable for uptake by industry.