Francisco Areal is a Professor in Economics at the Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University.  Francisco joined the Newcastle Business School in February 2023. Francisco previously worked as a Senior Lecturer in Agricultural Economics at the Centre for Rural Economy, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences at Newcastle University from 2019 to 2023 and as Associate Professor and Lecturer in Environmental Economics at the University of Reading 2011-2019. Before he worked at the Joint Research Centre – Institute for Prospective Technological Studies in Seville, Spain and at the Central Science Laboratory in York (currently known as the Food and Environment Research Agency –FERA-).

Francisco's research focuses on the interaction between agriculture, the environment, economics and society by developing and applying statistical and econometric methods to answer questions of policy relevance for agriculture and the environment.

Francisco is currently working on developing farm sustainability indicators; developing econometric methods to account for social connectivity (e.g. interdependence of individuals’ preferences) and unobserved heterogeneity in consumer's and producer's choices.

Francisco is currently leading a WP analysing consumer preferences at UK scale, as part of SUS-Health, a UKRI awarded collaboration between Newcastle University and Queen's University Belfast, that aims to increase sustainability and healthiness of food in UK food consumption led by Prof. Lynn Frewer (Newcastle University).

Francisco is also leading a WP on Barriers and incentives linked to farmer adoption of agro-forestry practices, as part of AF Futures, a UKRI awarded project led by Prof. Lynn Frewer (Newcastle University)

Francisco has recently led a project on achieving sustainable intensification using remote sensing in China funded by Agri-Tech in China Newton Network.

Francisco has also worked on a wide number of nationally and internationally funded projects in the past including FP6-SIGMEA, FP6 CO-extra, Defra's funded Sustainable Intensification Platform, and Innovative UK funded Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Aramajaro, amongst others. Recently, Francisco has worked on an EU funded project, SOILCARE, leading a WP on social aspects influencing the adoption of soil-improving innovations. In this project, Francisco analysed the individual's willingness to pay for soil quality improvement.