Cornelia (Conny) Guell is Associate Professor in Anthropology of Health and Environment, and the Centre’s Co-Director with Associate Professor Ben Wheeler.

Her research addresses key planetary health priorities to create healthy, sustainable and socially just environments in both Global South and Global North settings with a focus particularly on food systems for better nutrition and healthy infrastructure to support physically active lives. Conny leads highly interdisciplinary international research teams across the social sciences, humanities, health and environmental sciences in Small Island Developing States as well as European settings and the UK funded by most major UK funders.

Conny’s research on food systems and food sovereignty includes working with historians, health researchers, policymakers and civil society to investigate the historical, political-economic and socio-cultural contexts of contemporary foodscapes and related food practices and subsequent health outcomes. In the NIHR Global Health Group Global CFaH, she leads work on understanding these contexts, and enabling factors such as local and national governance and policy frameworks, to strengthening local food systems in the Caribbean, South Pacifica and the Philippines. She is also the Community Engagement and Involvement lead for the group.

Her other research focus is on active living and physical activity practices. She is co-principal investigator of the COAST project with SPHR, in which colleagues from the Universities of Exeter, Cambridge and Durham, together with local partners, explore how local authority transport planning policies can support equitable and sustainable active travel in rural coastal settings. She is also member of the advisory board of the SPHR Health Paces, Health Planet programme.

Conny also designs and leads undergraduate and postgraduate modules and teaching on social contexts of health and the environment, global health, and qualitative research methods, including on the Centre’s flagship programme, the MSc in Environment and Human Health and welcomes PhD students in her area of interest. She is external examiner for the University of Cambridge, the University of the West Indies and the University of the South Pacific. She is an ASPIRE Senior Fellow of the Academy of Higher Education.

Conny is also steering group member of the Exeter Food network, a co-investigator of the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health; and member of the Society for Social Medicine and Population Health and the Royal Anthropological Institute.