Here at the AFN Network+, we’re governed by our Executive team and Co-Investigators, with an active Advisory Board in place. We have engaged Champions, Specialist Advisors, Liaisons and Early Career Researchers Board who together with our Project Partners are fostering a wide Community of Practice.

Early Career Researcher Board

Chidiebere Ofoegbu

Chidiebere is a forest and environmental scientist. His research interests focus on landscape and natural resources sustainability and ecosystem services. As a broadly trained natural resource scientist, he is well suited to understand and communicate the connections among the ecological, economic, policy and social dimensions of these systems within the context of sustainable development.

Payton Yau

Payton is a research associate in microbiology and bioinformatics at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC). His current research focuses on soil microbiome in crops for the UK Crop Microbiome CryoBank. He previously worked on cancer, infectious and digestive diseases, focusing on epigenetics, microbial diagnostics, gut-host interactions and meta-analysis.

Katie McDermott

Katie is a lecturer in Sustainable Livestock Production at the University of Leeds. She is interested in sustainable ways of improving animal health, efficiency and productivity while reducing feed waste, minimising land use and decreasing environmental pollution. Katie studies microbes in the gut and animal waste and is keen to explore ways to valorise waste streams.

Sarah Morgan

Sarah is a Lecturer in Beef and Sheep Production at Harper Adams University and specialises in sustainable grazing livestock research. She has a particular interest in soil-plant-animal-human interactions and holistic systems thinking. Her expertise include ruminant livestock production, grassland management, soil health, animal behaviour, health and welfare, meat science and precision livestock farming technologies.

Isobel Lloyd

Isobel is a third-year PhD student at the University of Leeds, based in the School of Geography. Her work involves measuring greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural soils in the UK using well-established and novel technologies. She is interested in working towards solutions for helping the agricultural sector reduce its impact on the environment whilst ensuring food security.

Richard Francksen

Richard is an applied ecologist, with a current research focus on agro-ecological systems. He is interested in the provision of multiple ecosystem services from multifunctional landscapes, and how agricultural practice and policy has repercussions for food security, biodiversity conservation and ecosystem service delivery.

Sotirios Oikonomou

Sotirios has a broad background in food microbiology and is currently working on developing new technologies and strategies to ensure the safety and quality of the food supply. His primary view is on the application of 3D printing technology (polymers and functional foods) and its great potential to be applied in the food sector as a sustainable technology, as well as the viability of consumer acceptance towards this novel technology.

Natasha Auch

In 2022,  Natasha completed a PhD at Newcastle University in behavioural economics for sustainable food consumption, with input from Unilever. She now works as a social science consultant for ADAS, an environmental and agricultural consultancy. Her skills are in qualitative data analysis. She is interested in behavioural insights and believes that while technological innovations will keep advancing, human perceptions can be a barrier.  ​

Andrea Garduño Jiménez

Andrea is an environmental engineer with analytical chemistry expertise; her research lies around reusing ‘waste’ streams in agriculture. Her interests are understanding, and ultimately minimising, environmental pollution arising from waste reuse (e.g. wastewater reuse for irrigation) in the agri-ecosystem. She is keen to work with social scientists to address social barriers to achieve sustainable waste reuse in agriculture globally. 

Saher Hasnain

​Saher is a researcher at the Food Systems Transformation Programme with the University of Oxford's Environmental Change Institute. Trained as an environmental scientist and geographer, she currently works on an interdisciplinary portfolio focused on food systems and foresight analysis.

Colm Duffy

Colm is an Agri-food Systems Ecologist at the James Hutton Institute and an EPA fellow in the University of Limerick. He specialises in modelling land use and land use change, life cycle and systems analysis. In addition, he has also worked on several other projects with the University of Galway, Bangor University. Colm has led the modelling work on the SeQUEsTER project and continues to develop the GOBLIN modelling framework in his current fellowship capacity.

David Baldrin

David is a researcher in soil biophysics and soil-plant interactions at The James Hutton Institute and at the University of Dundee. His research interests span from sustainable soil management in agroecosystem to environmental engineering in built environment. His major focus is on hydromechanical behaviour of vegetated soils to design nature-based solutions for adaptation to the climate crisis.

Virginia Thomas

Based in the Centre for Rural Policy Research at the University of Exeter, Virginia is an environmental social scientist researching the interface between conservation and other forms of land use. Her research explores the intersection of conservation and agriculture and how this is negotiated between different stakeholders. She is particularly interested in the narratives and policies surrounding ecological restoration, agricultural food production, and carbon sequestration and other pathways to net zero.  ​

Samuel Robinson

Sam is a Plant-Soil Biogeochemist based at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology Lancaster. Sam conducts fundamental and applied research to understand and mitigate land use impacts on biodiversity, biogeochemical cycles and GHG emissions underpinned by plant-soil interactions across systems ranging from temperate cropland to tropical forest. Current work addresses diurnal variation in soil nitrous oxide emissions from UK agriculture and ecosystem carbon stocks in oil palm plantations in SE Asia.

Zainab Oyetunde-Usman

Zainab is a Research Scientist in Social Science based at the Net Zero and Resilient Farming Department at Rothamsted Research. Her research interest surrounds behavioural and impacts modelling of innovative climate-resilient techniques across the agricultural food value chain in the UK. She is particularly interested in how the farming population heterogeneity plays a role in their various choices of climate-resilient techniques in the UK, and as well interested in consumers’ behavioural perceptions of innovative food products. ​

Bingjie Li

Bingjie is a quantitative geneticist and animal breeder at Scotland's Rural College (SRUC). Her research focuses on 1) developing statistical methods to study genetic difference in animal population, 2) developing sustainable and efficient animal production through breeding, 3) uncovering genetic basis of animal complex traits through integrating diverse data sources (e.g. data on animal production, health, efficiency, as well as animals' genomic, transcriptomic, epigenomic data). She has been working on projects with BBSRC, AHDB, DEFRA and international consortium on animal production, genetics, and breeding.

Ruben Valcarce Diñeiro

Ruben is a researcher in Remote Sensing at Newcastle University. He has over eight years of experience (industry and academia) in monitoring vegetation in agricultural and forest environments,  through the development and application of remote sensing technology,  including satellite time series.

Gaetano Grilli

​Gaetano is a research fellow at the School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia. His current work focuses on pathways to the sustainable management of ecosystems and natural resources. Gaetano is an applied economist interested in the relationship between ecosystem services and individual wellbeing, focusing on environmental valuation, applied microeconomics and quality of life. 
 

Joana Ferreira

​Joana is an ecological economist and biologist, working at Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) and University of Edinburgh. As a social and natural scientist, Joana is keen on cross- and transdisciplinary research. Her current research focuses on invertebrate conservation in agricultural landscapes. She is interested in conservation behaviour, collaborative learning and action, social well-being and ecological health indicators, and participatory monitoring design.

Joseph Martlew

Joseph is a Research Agronomist at NIAB, with a mixed background in academia as a soil scientist and in industry as a commercial agronomist. Joseph has a strong interest in how farm management approaches may be brought together into farming systems to increase the sustainability and resilience of food production. His specialist areas are soil function,  soil/machinery interactions and agronomy.

We will be providing more information soon regarding Specialist Advisors and Liaisons who together with our Project Partners are fostering a wide Community of Practice within the Network+.