About
Sarah is a Registered Nutritionist (Public Health) with expertise in food systems, food policy, and adolescent health. She is currently a Senior Research Fellow on the Food Aid Inequalities Rectified (FAIR) study, which brings together community organisations, local government, and food aid providers with the aim of improving the quality of food aid support across Southampton, the New Forest, and the Isle of Wight.
Sarah is a mixed-methods researcher with a background in public health nutrition. She holds a BSc in Nutrition from Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, and a PhD in Public Health Nutrition from the University of Southampton. Her doctoral research explored how adolescents interact with their food environments, using innovative methods such as GPS mapping, ecological momentary assessment and social network analysis.
From 2013 to 2023, Sarah was a Research Fellow at the MRC Lifecourse Epidemiology Centre, University of Southampton, contributing to several large observational and intervention studies. She initially supported the Hertfordshire Cohort Study before moving on to the EACH-B study, an NIHR-funded randomised controlled trial testing a multi-component intervention designed to support adolescents in making healthier lifestyle choices.
Before rejoining Southampton in 2025, Sarah was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the MRC Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridge, where she worked on the SALIENT project. This large, multi-disciplinary programme aimed to co-design, implement, and evaluate interventions to improve the healthfulness and sustainability of the food system. Sarah led the project’s meta-evaluation, which included a qualitative study to understand stakeholder perspectives on participating in SALIENT. This work aimed to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the co-design process and identify shared lessons and policy implications.