• The Natural Resources Institute (lead institution) (NRI) is a research, development and education organisation of the University of Greenwich based in Medway. NRI has more than 60 natural and social scientists whose work focuses on food, agriculture, environment, and sustainable livelihoods from an interdisciplinary perspective. Several colleagues in the Faculty of Engineering and Science are also associated with NRI. This diverse pool of supervisors offers a wide range of expertise to guide students in their research across different aspects of the food systems:
  1. agricultural production, ecosystem services, soil science;
  2. food distribution, food safety and waste;
  3. food environments, nutritional outcomes, behaviour change;
  4. political economy, political agroecology, food studies.
  For more information on NRI please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• Brunel University London (BUL) in West London is a dynamic institution with over 15,000 students and over 2,000 academic staff operating in a vibrant culture of research excellence. The University plays a significant role in the higher education scene nationally and has numerous national and international links and partnerships with both academia and industry. The food research at BUL involves:
  1. post-harvest technologies covering food processing, distribution, retail, consumption and waste valorisation;
  2. energy and environmental impact reduction including Life Cycle Analysis along food chains;
  3. food supply chain management and sustainable food value chains;
  4. sensors, instrumentation, automation and robotics;
  5. environmental management and risks;
  6. digital business analytics and food security.
• The Centre for Food Policy, City, St George’s, University of London is the only research and education centre solely devoted to studying food policy in the UK. Our work takes an interdisciplinary whole-systems approach with a pragmatic focus on the decisions that form effective food policy. Our research and engagement activities aim to shape food systems to improve the health of people, society, the environment and the economy. Kernels offered focus on the role of food policy within the food system, including mapping governance, policy coherence, power, and corporate lobbying in the UK food system. Other kernels offered inform UK policy development though the analysis of lived experiences, media, and value chains. We also have nutrition and health researchers who can offer focused natural sciences kernels. For more information on the Centre for Food Policy please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• IBERS at Aberystwyth University, embraces multi-disciplinary approaches to improve environmental sustainability, food security, health and wellbeing. IBERS research capacity includes expertise in agri-food systems linking soil-plant-animal food pathways through to testing of metabolites in novel food products on human health. As a BBRSC institute with the ability to develop novel plant resources to meet global demands for future agri-food systems, IBERS expertise in sustainable food systems is built on a 100-year legacy and world-renowned reputation in plant breeding. Research capabilities span a whole farm systems approach, with livestock scientists working closely with plant breeders and stakeholders to deliver productive and resilient agri-food systems.
• Royal Veterinary College: As one of the world's leading specialist veterinary and biological science research institutions, the RVC brings together talented individuals, all of whom share a passion for human and animal health and welfare. The RVC has an established sustainable food systems group, conducting cutting-edge interdisciplinary research at the nexus between sustainable agriculture and livestock production, animal health and human diets. A pool of 23 potential supervisors can offer expertise in
  1. sustainable food system
  2. food safety & foodborne zoonoses,
  3. animal welfare science & ethics,
  4. antimicrobial use & resistance in livestock systems from both science and social-science disciplines.
  For more information about RVC please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• University College London: Founded in 1826, UCL is London's leading multidisciplinary university, with 11 academic faculties, more than 13,000 staff and 42,000 students from 150 different countries. UCL includes 30 Nobel Prize laureates amongst its alumni and current and former staff, and was rated the top university in the UK for research strength in the most recent Research Excellence Framework. UCL offers kernels in many areas of food systems research, including nutrition, insulin resistance and type-2 diabetes, the environmental impacts of food production, the production of cultivated meat, developing novel food packaging to reduce waste, and the sociology and ethnography of food practices. For general enquires about studying at UCL email Nadine Mogford This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• The University of Sussex has over 60 faculty actively engaged in food system research, strongly relying on interdisciplinarity to advance our knowledge and provide novel solutions for a more sustainable, just, and resilient food system for people and the planet. We have research strengths across natural, social and physical sciences and work closely with diverse stakeholders in disciplines ranging from climate impacts, mitigation, adaptation, and ecological interaction in agroecosystems to political economy and critical social science approaches for sustainable food systems analysis. At Sussex you will be able to choose from a wide range of kernel topics. Examples include quantifying carbon stores on agricultural land, issues around pollination and pest control, understanding GMOs, democratization of multi-purpose land use and resilient city region food systems. For queries about research topics and academics based at Sussex, contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (School of Life Sciences), This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (Science Policy Research Unit/Business School) or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. (School of Global Studies). For general enquires about doctoral training at Sussex contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

and two leading agricultural research institutes:

• NIAB research has focused for more than 100 years on sustainable food production, high produce quality, safeguarding ecology and the environment. Our research includes cutting edge fundamental study, translational research, and novel commercial applications. We are tackling challenges of climate change, food security, food chain quality and water/fertiliser use efficiency, to optimise economic and environmental sustainability of production. By exploring interactions between crops, pests, and beneficial/pathogenic microbes in everchanging environment we aim to develop ecology driven management practices. Using cutting-edge molecular biology, bioinformatics, and conventional breeding we are developing improved crop varieties to answer the challenges of the future. For more information about NIAB please contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
• Rothamsted Research, founded in 1843, offers a wide range of high-quality multi- and inter-disciplinary opportunities in the natural sciences aspects of food system research related to both arable and grazing-livestock food production. The Institute hosts 3 BBSRC National Capabilities: The North Wyke Farm Platform (NWFP); The Long-term Field Experiments and associated archives; The Rothamsted Insect Survey; alongside a diversity of bioscience expertise including cutting-edge gene editing technology. Rothamsted Research is involved in 9 national and international studentship programmes and therefore has experience of supervising students and collaborating successfully with University partners on successful postgraduate programmes hosting circa 45 PhD students.

As a term, “interdisciplinarity” is often understood in many different ways. Interdisciplinary research can be understood “a mode of research by teams or individuals that integrates information, data, techniques, tools, perspectives, concepts, and/or theories from two or more disciplines or bodies of specialized knowledge to advance fundamental understanding or to solve problems whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline or area of research practice." (National Academies Report²)

Interdisciplinary study allows for synthesis of ideas and the synthesis of characteristics from many disciplines. At the same time, it addresses students' individual differences and helps to develop important, transferable skills.

² Committee on Facilitating Interdisciplinary Research, Committee on Science, Engineering, and Public Policy (2004). Facilitating interdisciplinary research. National Academies. Washington: National Academy Press, p. 2.

The urgent need to transform the UK food system presents an opportunity to reframe and address the country’s needs. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of sustainable food systems with reduced environmental impacts and emissions, that support the population, and are resilient to the impacts of climate change and world food price fluctuations. The pre-pandemic rise in use of foodbanks, followed by prolonged lockdown with reduced access to school meals, vouchers and nutritious food for many families, high COVID-19 mortality rates among BAME groups (in some part related to diet and underlying health conditions) are stark reminders that no-one should be left behind. The Health Survey for England 2017 estimates that 28.7% of adults in England are obese and a further 35.6% are overweight. Post-Brexit, it is anticipated that household food security issues will arise due to median food price increases. As the UK’s largest manufacturing sector (£28.3Bn/year), our food system provides employment and economic growth, affects our environment and shapes our landscape, influences our health and wellbeing, and is of great social and cultural importance. Single use plastics and food waste impacts on the environment are of increasing concern.

The UK food system is complex and interrelated, with inevitable trade-offs between costs and benefits, and competing priorities. In the context of changing demographics, diverse cultural influences, technological development, climate change, and environmental challenges, there is a need to train future leaders and innovators, who can bring new ideas, provide evidence, and safeguard values to advance a vision that develops Healthy People, Healthy Animals, a Healthy Environment, a Healthy Economy and a Healthy Society thus transforming the UK Food System.

The UKFS-CDT has adapted the food system framework presented by the High-Level Panel of Experts (Figure 1), which recognises contributions of food supply chains, food environments and consumer behaviour to nutrition and health outcomes as well as social, political, economic, and environmental drivers and impacts.

To ensure that our food systems are sustainable and support healthy people, healthy animals, a healthy environment, a healthy economy and a healthy society, students will develop challenge-led projects across five strongly interrelated theme areas informed by the framework with topics such as, but not limited to:

Healthy People

• Understanding and influencing consumer behaviour change for improved diets.
• Healthy food environments and access to healthy dietary choices.
• Basic science of nutrition and diet-related health outcomes.
• Food safety and sanitation

Healthy Animals

• Livestock in sustainable food systems.
• Livestock welfare, animal ethics.
• Livestock and environmental impacts.
• Animal-sourced foods and nutrition security.

Healthy Environment

• Environmental sustainability of food systems from production to consumption (e.g., efficient production and processing, plastic packaging, planetary dietary patterns).
• Impact of climate change and variability on food systems.
• Biodiversity, ecosystem services and food systems.
• Urban farming (e.g., vertical farming, community gardens, rooftop gardens, sack gardens).
• Low-carbon food systems (e.g., reduced emissions and sustainable and circular economy of production and consumption)

Healthy Economy

• Food production, distribution, manufacturing and waste
• Efficient and equitable resource use in the food system (e.g., sustainable agricultural intensification, labour in food systems, conservation of natural resources).
• Transformative food innovations via novel product and process technologies (e.g., innovations in design-led manufacturing, automation, packaging, storage, distribution and marketing).
• Reducing and upcycling food loss and waste.

Healthy Society

• Food system governanceand policies (e.g., global food trade, Brexit, UK food imports).
• Food system resilience (e.g., zoonotic epidemics, antimicrobial use and resistance, uncertainties and consequence of changes).
• Food culture and diets (e.g., intergenerational differences, food heritage, multicultural exchanges, traditional knowledge transfers, migration and transfer of food practices).
• Food poverty, social & health inequities, and the role of food charities in UK’s food system.
• Social protection/Responsible business practices / Equitable labour reform (e.g., workers’ rights & wellbeing, informal & unpaid/unrecognised labour, employment impacts of robotics and automation).
• Political ecology and geography of food (e.g., interrelationships between nature, people, and environment; social and ecological impacts of new and emerging technologies)
• Social movements (e.g., food sovereignty, Indigenous hunting and fishing rights).
• History of food systems (e.g., past lessons to prepare for the common food future).

The CDT’s approach is interdisciplinary, based on partnership with a broad range of stakeholders across the UK food system, and building on the latest research findings and approaches. In order to co-create and disseminate a body of knowledge capable of achieving significant policy and impact in practice the UKFS-CDT will focus on doctoral projects at and across national and regional levels and in key rural and urban geographies including: London, Kent and Medway, and Aberystwyth, Mid-Wales. London links with partners’ strong local connections (e.g., London Food Board/Greater London Authority) and is the UK’s only megacity, an exemplar of challenges of urban food systems, with multiple and complex issues for diverse populations. Kent and Medway link with a new £17.9M UKRI Strength in Places ‘Growing Kent and Medway’ investment. It is a major area of fruit and vegetable production with transport and logistics operations serving communities with high levels of social deprivation and diet-related health issues; Aberystwyth, Mid-Wales as a geography, under a devolved administration, reflects the great importance of the UK grasslands in agri-food systems, occupying approx. 70% of total agricultural land area in the UK and dominating landscapes of mid-Wales. With the agricultural supply chains at the heart of the rural economy, this location provides an ideal context to study the interrelated complexities of how food systems contribute to the wider sustainability of rural communities and integration between rural and urban linkages.

This four-year programme is aimed at graduates with a strong interest in inter-disciplinary food systems research. Understanding complex food system challenges requires holistic and novel interdisciplinary thinking.

Each student will initially register as a student with the University of Greenwich. After the first 12 months, when the PhD research starts, student registration will be transferred to the University of the first supervisor (or the second supervisor, if the first supervisor works at NIAB or Rothamsted Research).

Induction

All UKFS-CDT students start at the beginning of the academic year with 3-weeks of induction events.

These weeks contain a variety of information sharing and cohort building activities to introduce students to the programme, help them make informed decisions for the year and begin the bonding process for the cohort.

Information sessions will showcase a catalogue of core project ideas known as ‘project kernels’, presented by prospective supervisors from academic institutions, covering the widest interpretation of the food systems remit. Other information sessions include introduction to taught elements, rotations opportunities at academic institutions in the first year, and Professional Internships for PhD Students (PIPS) during Year 2 and 3. The induction events, training, and rotations at academic institutions will provide students with a rich exposure to a variety of food systems research challenges, questions, and methods that will help inform the preparation of their PhD research proposal.

Additional activities during Induction focus on well-being and cohort building. One of our first workshops focuses on the common stressors that PhD students might experience and some excellent techniques to manage and mitigate them. Induction events will include team-building and networking opportunities for students to meet and mingle with Food Systems Academy members. Food Systems Academy currently has over 50 partners from business, government departments and civil society, so there are ample opportunities to build students' network.

The UK Food Systems Academy and Project Co-Design

The UK Food Systems Academy is an integral part of the CDT. All students and potential supervisors will become members of the Academy. The Academy also has members from business, government and civil society. These members have agreed to support the CDT in a number of ways including offering placements, partnering in research and contributing to training.

All students will be engaged in the co-design of their own research projects in collaboration with the UK Food Systems Academy which is the gateway for students to supervisors and core project ideas (project kernels). Early in Year 1, students will select from a catalogue of project kernels that will form the basis of their rotations with potential supervisors. Following the rotations, thesis proposals will be finalised in a capstone two-day Project and Thesis Proposal Intensive Workshop with partners from the Food System Academy.

Rotations

In the first year, each UKFS-CDT student undertakes two 4-month rotation projects at two different academic institutions in the UKFS-CDT consortium. All rotation projects represent a clearly defined and significant fraction of the work proposed for an entire PhD project. As a result, a rotation project is an authentic sample of the work expected for the PhD. Consequently, our students can reassure themselves of the scientific merit of the project, the quality of the research environment, available resources, the strengths of the supervisory team and their own capacity to pursue the investigation.

Most CDT students select a PhD project associated with one of their two rotation projects, although this is not a requirement, they then join their chosen research group after the end of their 2nd rotation or in Year 2.

Teaching and Learning

Students will complete courses in research ethics and integrity in addition to (i) Exploration of Food Systems, (ii) Investigation of Systems Thinking (iii) Application of Food Systems Methods and (iv) Intervention for Food Systems Change. Students will engage in participatory learning that involves working with their cohort peers and stakeholders across multiple disciplines, with training and practice on effective communication and complex systems thinking needed to face the vast range of challenges faces by the UK Food System.

PhD Research (Year 2 to 4)

In years 2 and 3 of the programme students are dedicated to their research. In year 2, students will be enrolled at the institution of their primary supervisor. They will be expected to conduct their research based at the chosen institution.

All students will have an annual review with a member of the management committee to evaluate progress and manage any issues that arise. There is also a suite of employability events and wellbeing training sessions. It is common that students will undertake their Professional Internships for PhD Students in years 2 or 3.

In year 4 of the programme, all students are enrolled in a dedicated programme and pastoral care, designed to prepare and support students in their PhD research write-up and thesis submission.

Professional Internships for PhD Students (PIPS)

UKRI mandates that all students funded in this programme take part in the Professional Internship for PhD Students (PIPS) scheme. This involves a three-month work experience placement that can be undertaken with any organisation in the public or privates’ sectors in the UK according to student interest and a suitable agreement with the host. The only stipulation is that the work must be in an area demonstrably unrelated to the student's research project. The timing of the internships has a degree of flexibility, taking place during the second or third year of the PhD, (months 18 to 36).

The aims of the Professional Internships are to provide a funded opportunity for students to: develop new skill sets, gain work experience in the non-academic research sector; assess the non-research career environments in the public or private sectors, evaluate a wider range of career options and understand how the skills gained during the PhD can be utilised in other sectors. Careers and programme administrative staff support all UKFS-CDT programme students in arranging their PIPS placement.

Cohort Building and Networking

Cohort building is integrated into interactive activities that combine training, outreach, and networking. By allowing students to network within and between cohorts, UKFS-CDT mobilises our large student body as an additional layer of peer support for both scientific and wellbeing issues.

Final Year

Along with the final preparation and submission of students’ thesis, the students’ journey will culminate in a celebratory Graduates’ Showcase and Submitters’ Dinner which will feature publication of an accessible, industry-facing output report and presentation that bring together key findings and future implications for the sector. Students will transition into the UKFS-CDT alumni network, continuing interactions with members of the Food Systems Academy.

Please note that recruitment for the CDT programme has ended. Please ensure you have read the website before contacting the UKFS-CDT programme management team at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.