Rate My Professor Maria Bryant

Maria Bryant is Professor of Public Health Nutrition in the Department of Health Sciences and Hull York Medical School at the University of York, as well as Director of Nutrition Research at the Bradford Institute of Health Research. She earned a BSc (Hons) in Nutrition with first-class honours from King's College London and a PhD in Nutrition and Psychology from the University of Leeds. A Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the International Obesity Society since 2012, she was awarded the NIHR Development and Skills Enhancement Award in 2021. With over 20 years of experience as a nutritionist, she leads the Public Health Nutrition Research Group and serves as strategic lead for public health nutrition research within her department and medical school.

Professor Bryant's research focuses on the design, delivery, and evaluation of public health interventions addressing food, diet, obesity, food systems, food insecurity, early years, and school food settings. She holds prominent roles including theme lead for UKPRP ActEarly in evaluation and food and healthy weight, sub-system lead for early years and schools in UKRI FixOurFood, Academic Director of the BaBi network, and academic lead for diet and obesity evaluation in Better Start Bradford. As outgoing Chair of the Board of Trustees for the UK Association for the Study of Obesity, she has contributed to committees such as the European Congress of Obesity programme and ESRC Strategic Network in Obesity. Key projects under her chief investigation include the NIHR PHR evaluation of the HENRY programme (2022-2027), NIHR PHR study on community food assets preventing emergency food aid needs (2023-2025), and the Food in Bradford Schools study. Notable publications comprise 'Auto-enrolment of free school meals: a “No Brainer”?' (Public Health Nutrition, 2026), 'Creating a meta-REM map: pragmatic improvements to ripple effects mapping methodology used to support evaluations of complex public health systems' (BMC Medical Research Methodology, 2026), 'Food and Dietary Behaviour among Adolescents in Bradford, England' (Wellcome Open Research, 2026), and 'protocol for the HENRY III cluster randomised controlled trial' (BMJ Open, 2024). She has given invited keynotes, including on progress in the Childhood Obesity Plan (2020).