About me

Kia ora, welcome.

I’m an interdisciplinary public health researcher based in Auckland, New Zealand. I use systems thinking and policy analysis to explore the political economy of ultra-processed foods, both globally and locally in Aotearoa New Zealand.

My research investigates how trends in trade, investment, manufacturing, marketing, and consumption of ultra-processed products may be contributing to trends in non-communicable diseases like diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease.

These products, high in salt, refined carbohydrates and fats, and containing industrial sensory-enhancing additives, increasingly dominate our food systems, despite well-documented harm to human health and the environment.

Using a systems lens, I examine why ultra-processed food consumption remains high, why policy has lagged, and where the levers for change lie.

My PhD looked specifically at how legally-binding international trade and investment agreements can constrain governments’ ability to regulate unhealthy food and drinks to improve food environments, and how to improve policy coherence between economic (trade) and health objectives.

I am a Co-Director of INFORMAS, a global network of food environment researchers, and I co-lead a group developing new methods to monitor international trade, investment, and financialization to inform healthier food policy. I also sit on the Food Policy Expert Panel of Health Coalition Aotearoa, and am an active member of the Healthy Auckland Together food environments working group.

My mission, is to build world-leading transdisciplinary research focused on the intersections of economic policy, food systems, nutrition, and planetary health, and to help translate this knowledge into policy action.

QUALIFICATIONS

2021   PhD, Population Health, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.

2014   MSc, Population and Public Health, The University of British Columbia, Canada

2010   BA, Geography, McGill University, Canada.