Nutrition, Food and Human Health (Research)

Our Nutrition, Food and Human Health PhD and MPhil programmes ground students in the methods and research approaches to understand how nutrition and food affect human health and wellbeing.

Within your research, you'll get the opportunity to work in our multi-disciplinary teams. Our work explores how nutrition affects:

human biology and physiology - including human athletic performance and the microbiome
health and ageing
disease process - including cancer, cardiometabolic diseases such as diabetes and NAFLD
how food security affects biology and wellbeing
nutrition and health challenges in global sustainability
the outcome and management of disease (dietetics)

Our research is multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary. We centre core nutrition research in The Human Nutrition & Exercise Research Centre (HNERC). Our researchers collaborate with food scientists and food systems experts from across Newcastle. They have access to two University farms. This allows us to tailor multidisciplinary research programmes across pure and social sciences. This means the HNERC can apply science projects from “farm to fork”.

For self-funded students, please read our list of available projects and supervisory teams on the HNERC homepage. You'll find these under self-funded PhD and MPhil projects.

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View our academic experience page. This gives information about your study experience for the academic year 2025-26.

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