Professor Corinna Hawkes is Director of the Centre for Food Policy. She joined the Centre in January 2016 bringing with her a diversity of international experience at the interface between policy and research. She has worked with international agencies, governments, NGOs, think tanks and universities at the international level, as well as nationally and locally in the UK, United States and Brazil. A regular advisor to governments, international agencies and NGOs, her specialism is the role of food systems policies in what we eat and how they can be levered for positive impact. Corinna serves as Co-Chair of the Independent Expert Group of the Global Nutrition Report, an international report tracking progress in malnutrition in all its forms across the globe. She sits on the EAT-Lancet Commission on Healthy Diets from Sustainable Food Systems, the Lancet Commission on Obesity and the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food).

Corinna has worked for the World Health Organization (Geneva), the International Food Policy Research Institute (Washington DC) and in 2009-2010, held a fellowship at the School of Public Health at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Between 2012 and 2015 she was Head of Policy and Public Affairs at World Cancer Research Fund International, where she established the NOURISHING Policy Framework for healthy diets and obesity. Consultancy clients have included the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, the World Bank and the United Nations Standing Committee on Nutrition.

Taking an inter-disciplinary approach, Corinna has published widely on food policy from farm to fork and the link with diets and nutrition, including on the policies and processes of globalization, trade policy, agriculture policies, nutrition labelling and policies on food marketing to children.


Corinna is a Trustee of Sustain: The Alliance for Better Food and Farming, UK and on the Expert Advisory Group of The Food Foundation, UK. She is one of the Independent Panel of Experts for the grant programme, Innovative Metrics and Methods for Agriculture and Nutrition Actions (IMMANA), managed by the Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health, and part of the the Evaluation Advisory Committee for the Mexican sugar-sweetened beverages tax. In 2008 she chaired the WHO Expert Group on Marketing Food and Non-alcoholic Beverages to Children. Corinna has a PhD in Geography from Kings College London and a BSc in Geography from the University of Bristol.