Lucy Michaels

Interdisciplinary scholar trained in social sciences and environmental studies.

From 2022-2025, I was based in the Food Systems and Policy Research Group, at the Centre for Agriculture, Food and Environmental Management (CAFEM).

From October 2025, I took up a research fellowship at the Centre for Research on Public Health and Community Care (CRIPACC)

Current research interests include food policy and food systems transformation, with a particular focus on dietary inequalities, sustainable diets, sustainable procurement, and increasing UK production and consumption of pulses. 

For my current research project (GLADIOLI), I am evaluating a public health intervention to introduce systems thinking techniques into English local authorities to address dietary inequalities. 

Until September 2025, I worked on the UKRI (BBSRC) Transforming UK Food Systems project Thinking Beyond the Can: Mainstreaming UK-grown beans in healthy meals (BeanMeals), a five-University research collaboration along with stakeholders including the Soil Association Food for Life, 3Keel, Campden BRI and Leicester and Leicestershire local authorities. This project introduced novel UK-bred navy bean and kidney bean varieties into primary school meals in Leicester and Leicestershire. For this project, I focused on policy analysis (examining school food procurement policy and developing a food system-wide Pulse strategy for England) and lived-experience fieldwork with families. 

From 2021–2022, I was based at the University of Warwick’s Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies (CIM), working with Professor Maria Puig de la Bellacasa on the AHRC grant Ecological Belongings: transforming soil cultures through science, art and activism. An article based on this work, will appear Enviromental Humanities, March 2026. The project also included an illustrated project 'zine examining human-soil relations.

I also held a postdoctoral fellowship at Reichman University in Israel (2013–2015) with Professor Yael Parag on the EU Marie Curie grant STESS – socio-technical approach to energy service security, examining barriers and opportunities for adoption of energy-saving technologies.

During 2009–2010, I was a USIEF-Fulbright Visiting Doctoral Fellow at the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, working with Anthony Leiserowitz.

I have academic and professional publications on climate change communication, agribusiness supply chains, animal welfare and regenerative farming, energy sustainability transitions, environmental humanities and more-than-human care, and transboundary environmental cooperation in the Middle East. 

I have been a guest lecturer on postgraduate courses on research methods, sustainability transitions, climate change communication, environmental peacebuilding and human soil relations.

This  includes at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies (where I was also a teaching assistant during my doctoral studies), De Montfort University (where I held a visiting research fellowship 2017-2020) and from 2023, at Schumacher College in Devon, UK. 

Director, Corporate Watch. Research and advocacy cooperative examining the ethical and environmental behaviour of large corporations. Oxford, UK. 2000-2005. 

Advisory Council, ASEED Europe. Amsterdam. 2001-2005.

Resource co-ordinator, Alternative Information Centre (AIC). Jerusalem. 2006 - 2007.

Researcher, Story Assistant & Impact Producer, Six Inches of Soil. A documentary feature film about regenerative farming and agroecology. 2020 - ongoing. 

I have ten years experience working as a freelance researcher and project manager for British and international environmental and animal welfare advocacy groups including Changing Markets Foundation, Ecostorm, Feedback Global, Compassion in World Farming, World Animal Protection, Eurogroup for Animals, Beyond GM and Greenpeace International. 

I am active in UK Jewish environmental and land justice collective, Miknaf Haaretz and have written and presented on Jewish farming practices.