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Knowledge for a sustainable world

News - 2022

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The University of Greenwich is leading a partnership which aims to bring healthy, sustainable food to 25,000 people – around 5% of the population - in Kent and Medway. Worth £530k, the Kent and Medway Partnership for Enterprise, Food and Health launched on 2nd January 2022. It will see the University partner up with councils in Gravesham, Medway and Swale.

Dr Nazanin Zand was born and grew up in Iran where she undertook her first degree. She then moved to live, work and study in the UK, where she became an internationally acknowledged expert on food and infant nutrition. Nazanin has just taken over as NRI’s Head of Food and Markets Department (FMD) and has hit the ground running in her quest to promote women and girls in STEM, and help banish so-called ‘impostor syndrome’ (doubting your abilities and feeling like a fraud). Nazanin takes up the story.

A new study reveals that common methods of rat control often ignore basic animal welfare issues. Experts in pest control, animal welfare, and veterinary medicine explored the impact that different methods of rodent control have on rat welfare to better aid decision-making.  Their work has just been published in the article: ‘An assessment of animal welfare impacts in wild Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) management’.

Lora Forsythe, Fiorella Picchioni, Gillian Summers |

International Women’s Day (IWD) is an important day to highlight the achievements of women in agriculture, food and natural resources, which are often made invisible. The day is also an opportunity for NRI’s Gender and Social Difference (GSD) Development Programme to critically reflect on the past year and its future direction. This will enable us to identify ways our research can address important gaps in knowledge related to gender equality and transformative change.

Claudia Carvalho went from being a specialist in potatoes and other tuber and root crops at NRI, to becoming a soft fruit supremo at Berry Gardens, a leading berry and stone fruit production and marketing group in Kent, UK. Her love of crops and all things agricultural has also satisfied her love of travel, taking her from Europe to America, Africa and Asia . Claudia took five minutes out of her day to talk to NRI Communications Officer, Linden Kemkaran, about how she chose her career path and her ongoing passion for agriculture.

The UK Food Systems Centre for Doctoral Training (UKFS-CDT) is offering 15+ funded studentships for its second cohort starting in September 2022, covering the following themes:

NRI PhD student, Cedric Maforimbo, has won the Society of Chemical Industry’s (SCI) Sydney Andrew Scholarship. Cedric joined NRI in February of 2021 for his PhD programme in Agriculture, Health and Environment and the scholarship will supplement his current Food and Nutrition Security Initiative (FaNSI) Scholarship.