Paper 15.5 External Expertise Mapping

Summary

This paper outlines work undertaken to identify organisations with expertise in food policy research and analytical methods. The aim is to improve awareness of relevant research programmes and methodological approaches that may support or align with FSA priorities.

Members are asked to consider:

1. Are there any organisations or research groups working in the areas identified as gaps (shown in table 1) that we have not identified?
2. An alphabetical list of organisations is shown in annex A (by topic) and annex B (by method). Are there any additional organisations with relevant expertise that we have not identified?

Background

This paper summarises recent work to identify external organisations with expertise relevant to the FSA’s Analytics Unit (AU) and policy areas. The purpose of this work is to strengthen our awareness of current research programmes and methodological approaches that may support or align with FSA priorities, helping ensure that the AU’s work remains connected to developments across the wider evidence landscape.

This exercise has involved compiling structured lists of organisations and research groups to develop an up-to-date view of external expertise in:

• Food policy research, including areas such as food crime, novel foods, and wider consumer interests.
• Analytical methods used in social science, economics, statistics, and operational research

Approach

To identify relevant external expertise in food policy research and analytical methodologies, we began by consolidating existing internal sources of stakeholder information including: FSA Stakeholder Register and Register of Specialists, Science and evidence research directorate (SERD) intranet and newsletters (which includes updates on recent engagements and featured researchers), and the SERD stakeholder map (compiled earlier this year using SAC stakeholder lists, publication authors, and known collaborators).

This helped us establish a foundation of known organisations and research groups and identify areas where external expertise might currently be missing or underrepresented.

We then conducted targeted online searches to identify additional expertise, this included:

• Using university department pages, research group websites, and publication databases to identify relevant expertise in food policy topics and research methods. We focused on the Russell Group universities as a starting point, given their research intensity.
• Using curated lists such as the Food Research Collaboration’s directory of Food Research Institutes in the UK to identify specialist centres and networks.

The organisations identified through this process are listed alphabetically in the annexes:

• Annex A: Organisations and research groups with food policy expertise
• Annex B: Organisations and research groups with methodological expertise

Analysis of topic and method coverage

To support future use of the data, we developed a tagging system to classify expertise by topic and method:

• Topic keywords were based on the latest categorisation of AU projects, as reflected in our updated internal folder structure. These were adapted to reflect emerging areas of interest, for example, Novel Foods was added as a standalone topic due to significant AU activity in CBD, precision breeding, and alternative proteins.
• Topic keywords chosen were: Food Crime; Business Compliance (RCD, NLR); Operational Delivery (Regulated Products Delivery, OVs, Field Ops, Ops Assurance); Risk Analysis (Regulated Products Reform, Chemical, Radiological); Novel Foods (CBD, PB, CCP, Alt proteins, emerging technologies); Foodborne Diseases; AMR; Food Hypersensitivities; Trade; Consumer Monitoring (behaviour & perception); Communications (risk comms); Nutrition; Strategy (Strategic Insight, wider interests e.g. sustainability, schools, vulnerable, food insecurity); Not specified.
• Method keywords were identified by analysing FSA Social Science publications using CoPilot and grouped into overarching categories. Other AU teams (e.g. Operational Research, Economics, Statistics) have been invited to add to this list to ensure cross-disciplinary coverage.
• Method keywords chosen were: Evidence reviews; Surveys; Statistical analysis; Interviews, focus groups; Participatory, e.g. CitSci, deliberative; Ethnographic, e.g. observation; Creative e.g. social media; Innovative, e.g. AI, eye tracking; Behaviour change e.g. trials, experiments; Evaluations, e.g. process, outcome; Not specified.

Expertise was tagged by matching these keywords to descriptors found in “About Us” sections, research summaries, and publication abstracts.

These topic and method tags were then used to assess the breadth of coverage across the organisations identified. This analysis helped us highlight seven areas where expertise appears limited or fragmented.

Table 1 summarises the food policy topics and research methods that are currently underrepresented in the mapping.

Next Steps

Our overall aim is to create a searchable database to support colleagues in the Analytics Unit (and wider FSA) to identify suitable external research expertise and maintain awareness of external research programmes and publications. We will seek input from the ACSS assurance group when we have a first draft of this database and will update periodically.

Table 1: Areas of expertise with limited coverage

Discussion

Members are asked to consider:

1. Are there any organisations or research groups working in the areas identified as gaps (shown in table 1) that we have not identified?
2. An alphabetical list of organisations is shown in annex A (by topic) and annex B (by method). Are there any additional organisations with relevant expertise that we have not identified?

Annex A: Organisations and research groups with food policy expertise

Annex B: Organisations and research groups with methods expertise