Professor Maria Piacentini

Maria is a leading expert in consumption insights, focusing on real-world problems of global significance for marketing practice and public policy. She is a Professor in the Marketing Department and Director for the Centre for Consumption Insights at Lancaster University Management School. Her work has been published in international social sciences and marketing/management journals. She is a co-chair of the Academy of Marketing SIG Consumer Research with Societal Impact, and on the steering committee for the international Transformative Consumer Research (TCR) network. Maria is the Co-Principal Investigator for PPiPL.

Dr Alison Stowell

Alison is a Senior Lecturer in Management and Sustainability, and Associate Director of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business at Lancaster University. She is a Social Scientist interested in societal, management and organisational responses to waste; waste policy; values attributed to waste and waste as a particular type of work (collection, repair, reuse, recycling). Alison has worked on and led interdisciplinary projects ranging from attempts to quantify e-waste to exploring unreported e-waste flows to business and societal implications of flexible electronics. She has a sustained track record of securing funds from public and private bodies and her publication record reinforces her interdisciplinarity. Prior to becoming an academic, Alison worked in both the public and private sector for 14 years.

Alison is the Co-Principal Investigator for PPiPL

Professor James Cronin

James is Professor in Marketing and Consumer Culture Studies and Deputy Director of the Centre for Consumption Insights at Lancaster University Management School. His research is oriented towards how everyday consumer practices are socially embedded and culturally shaped. This focus has brought him to consider contexts including health and food cultures, fan interests, retail-related activities, and collective forms of consumption from a variety of cross-disciplinary and critical perspectives that emphasise the socio-cultural logics of the world around us. His research has appeared in journals including Sociology of Health and Illness, Marketing Theory, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Management, and Consumption, Markets & Culture.

Professor Alexandros Skandalis

Alex is a Professor in Marketing at Lancaster University Management School. His research interests revolve around consumer behaviour, consumer culture, and cultural sociology. Alex predominantly employs interpretive and qualitative research methods, such as ethnographic techniques and in-depth interviewing. His interdisciplinary work has appeared in leading international journals such as Sociology, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Theory, and Journal of Place Management and Development. His work has also been funded by external research bodies such as The British Academy. Alex brings theoretical and methodological expertise to the PPiPL project for the study of the broader institutional logics of the plastic packaging environment and the investigation of consumption behaviour in relation to plastic packaging. Along with Professor James Cronin, he is leading the Consumer Insights theme.

Professor Linda Hendry

Linda is Professor of Operations Management and Head of the Department of Management Science in Lancaster University Management School. She is a global research leader in sustainable supply chain management, and an influential scientific committee member of the European Operations Management Association Sustainability Forum. Her current research includes a focus on the reduction of plastics in the supply chain to address environmental sustainability, as well as combatting modern slavery to address social sustainability. Her work encompasses local and global supply chains, including: food and beverage production in emerging economies; and the impact of Brexit on local food supply chains. Her sustainability research builds on a strong foundation in manufacturing planning and control methods, along with continuous improvement approaches, such as Six Sigma.  All of her research focuses on engendering change and having an impact on supply chain partners to aid the competitiveness of the entire chain.

Dr John Hardy

John has an MSci and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Bristol and University of York, respectively. Between 2006 and 2015, he undertook research in Chemical Engineering at the University of Strasbourg, France; in Bioengineering at the University of Bayreuth, Germany; in Biomedical Engineering, at the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Florida; and in Pharmacy at Queen’s University, Belfast.

He is a 50th Anniversary Senior Lecturer in Lancaster University’s Department of Chemistry and Materials Science. His interdisciplinary research interests focus on polymer-based materials for medical and technical applications, involving collaborations with academia and industry.

Dr Matteo Saltalippi (to 31st January 2022)

Matteo Saltalippi is an anthropologist and filmmaker with an MA and PhD in Visual Anthropology from Goldsmiths University of London. He has a background in visual, qualitative and quantitative methods and has conducted extensive ethnographic research around labour unrest in an industrial context in Italy. His visual production includes documentaries on contemporary art, labour struggle, environmental activism and migration, which have been screened at international film festivals such as the Workers Unite, in New York; the Royal Anthropological Institute, in Bristol; and the Ethnofest in Athens. He is a member of the European Association of Social Anthropologists and has experience in the private sector as senior research consultant. He is a newly-appointed Research Associate in the Department of Organisation, Work and Technology at Lancaster University Management School for the PPiPL project.

Dr Charlotte Hadley 

Charlotte is a Research Associate in the Department of Marketing at Lancaster University Management School.

Her research interests focus around the challenges embedded in the connections between everyday consumption and environmental issues, particularly in the context of food and waste. Her work employs an interpretive, qualitative approach and she has previously undertaken ethnographic research, engaging social practice theory and issues around environmentally responsible consumption.

Outside of academia, she has a passion for the great outdoors and hiking in the Lake District, as well as a keen interest in growing her own food, composting her food waste and rainwater collection.

Dr Savita Verma (to 31st October 2022)

Savita is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Lancaster University Management School’s Department of Organisation, Work and Technology. She has a PhD in Management from the University of Leeds, and is a member of the Centre for Consumption Insights.

Savita specialises in interdisciplinary research in Supply chain and Sustainability with a key interest in behavioural theories. Her doctoral research, funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, was focused on exploring supply chain employees’ perceptions and their role towards integrating sustainability in supply chain functions using qualitative approaches.

As part of the PPiPL project, she aims to contribute to reducing plastic packaging in the food supply chain by bridging the consumer attitude-behaviour gap through her work on green behaviours.

Marta Ferri

Marta Ferri is a doctoral researcher in Lancaster University Management School’s Department of Organisation, Work and Technology and a member of the Pentland Centre for Sustainability in Business. Her research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and focuses on single-use plastics and circular economy solutions to tackle the plastic crisis. She has experience in ethnographic fieldwork, and her work draws upon Science and Technology Theory.

Marta has professional experience as a project manager and research centre coordinator at Zero Waste Italy. She is the PPiPL project Administrator.

Dr Clare Mumford (to February 29th 2024)

Clare is a senior research associate on the Plastic Packing in People’s Lives (PPiPL) research project. Since completing her PhD in 2015, she has worked on various research projects at the University of Manchester's Work and Equalities Institute and Manchester Metropolitan University’s Centre for Decent Work and Productivity. Her research interests focus broadly on subjective interpretations and experiences of what makes work life and working relations ‘good’ and meaningful. She specialises in qualitative research methodology and theory.

Dr Lenka Brunclikova

Lenka is a Research Associate on the Plastic Packing in People’s Lives (PPiPL) research project. Growing up in socialist Czechoslovakia, she experienced her childhood without any plastic packaging and PET bottles, hence she is very excited to be part of PPiPL. She graduated from the Department of Anthropology, University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic, where she conducted a 4-year research on the social dimension of household waste combining garbology and ethnography. Her research interests include human and waste interaction, informal economic models, local schemes of self-sufficiency and dealing with climate change challenges, and migrant workers’ strategies during the Brexit transition.

Outside of academia, she participates in the South Lakes Action on Climate Change, Kendal, where she volunteers at the Waste into Wellbeing project. She is keen on hiking, especially long-distance trails, photography, and learning new things.

Dr Ghadafi Razak (to 23rd June 2023)

Ghadafi is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Sustainable Supply Chain Management at Lancaster University Management School. He is a member of the European Operations Management Association (EurOMA). His research interests include innovations in supply chain management and their impact on global supply chain performance. Ghadafi is currently exploring the forms of traceability among emerging economy suppliers and its impact on enhancing global supply chain resilience and sustainability capabilities.

As a new member of the PPiPL project group, Ghadafi aims to engage and collaborate with the multidisciplinary team to produce mitigation guidance on the plastic packaging landscape in the UK food supply chain.

Harris Kaloudis (to 31st October 2023)

Harris is a Senior Research Associate on the PPiPL project. He combines this role with work in the Centre for Health Inequalities Research at the Division of Health Research at Lancaster University. He is a social scientist interested in applied interventions to address pressing social issues. His work in university, social enterprise, and local authority settings has encompassed participatory research in addressing local upstream determinants of health inequalities, mainstreaming equity considerations in health and social care research, and improving the working lives of people employed in adult social care and the experiences of people receiving their services.

Satyasarvani Pindiproli (to 31 January 2024)

Satyasarvani, a recent graduate in MSc Logistics and Supply Chain Management from Lancaster University Management School, joins the PPiPL project as a Data Analyst assistant. Her primary responsibility involves analysing data from various stakeholders within the food packaging supply chain while delving into consumer attitudes towards plastic packaging. Her interest in sustainability sparked during her master's program, and views this project as an opportunity to deepen her knowledge and understanding of sustainable practices within the context of the supply chain.

She hopes that her involvement in the PPiPL project will provide insights into the real-world applications of sustainable practices, similar to other accomplished researchers within the Lancaster University Management School. She is keen to contribute her skills and expertise towards reducing environmental impact while advancing her understanding of sustainability in a practical setting.