Meet the Team

Research team

The team at the University of Leeds led by Professor Michelle Morris have expertise in Public Health Nutrition, Behavioural Psychology, Data Science, Consumer Behaviour and Sustainability. Current members of the FRESH team are Professor Michelle Morris, Professor William Young, Dr Ali Fildes and Dr Alice Kininmonth.

Prof Michelle Morris

Professor of Data Science for Food

Michelle leads the interdisciplinary Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics team which uses novel forms of data, including supermarket transaction records from UK supermarkets, for research into lifestyle behaviours and health.

Prof William Young

Chair of Sustainability & Business

William’s research is focussed on consumer behaviour and sustainability issues working with retailers, suppliers and consumer organisations.

Dr Alison Fildes

Associate Professor of Psychology

Alison’s research centres on understanding how dietary and eating behaviours develop in childhood and how these behaviours can be changedd to improve lifelong health.

Dr Alice Kininmonth

Research Fellow in Nutrition & Lifestyle Analytics

Alice specialises in Public Health Nutrition, behavioural psychology and data analytics. Her research utilises supermarket transaction data to evaluate the effectiveness of retail interventions that aim to support customers to make healthier, more sustainable purchases.

Previous team members have included:

Dr Victoria Jenneson, Research fellow in Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics
Dr Georgia Tomova, Research fellow in Nutrition and Lifestyle Analytics
Dr Francesca Pontin, Research Data Scientist
Alexandra Dalton, Data Scientist on the Data Scientist Development Programme
Diogo Ann Onuselogu, Data Scientist on the Data Scientist Development Programme
Rayan Onyonka, Data Scientist on the Data Scientist Development Programme
Maddie Thomas, Project Student

Award-winning insights

Winning the ESRC Celebrating impact prize 2023

In 2023 the team was awarded the ESRC Outstanding Impact Prize in the Business and Enterprise category for their research insights.

The partnership with IGD has enabled the research team to run a series of in-store and online behaviour change trials with four UK food retailers. These trials have tested a range of interventions aimed at improving the public’s access to healthy and sustainable diets. IGD then use their platform and networks to share the research findings and the team’s insights more broadly with the sector and drive action.

Insights from the research have helped food retailers introduce changes that encourage people to make healthier and more sustainable shopping choices, including:

using price to incentivise customers to eat more fruit and vegetables
increasing the variety of meat-free products
extending access to support for those most in need