Greta Defeyter is Professor of Developmental Psychology in the department of Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing.  Greta is the  founder and the Director of the ‘Healthy Living’ Lab at Northumbria University and has spent the last 20 years researching food insecurity, social injustice, school feeding programmes and holiday hunger programmes in the UK. She has received funding from multiple sources and has published numerous papers on school breakfast clubs, school food programmes and holiday hunger programmes in the UK. She is now a recognised expert in this area and in 2015, she was made a Fellow of the British Psychological Society in recognition of her research with children living in areas of social and economic deprivation.  More recently, she joined a prestigious line up of award winners, including Jamie Oliver, by winning a Food Heroes Award from Sustain for her research on school breakfast clubs and holiday hunger programmes. In 2020 she was recognised, by the Big Issue, as one of the top 100 change makers for her research and policy impact on childhood food poverty in the UK.  Greta has advised the DfE on the Holiday Activities and Food Progamme (HAF) and is a member of the British Psychological Society Expert Reference Group-From Poverty to Flourishing, a Subject Expert on the American Psychological Association’s-Equity Flattens the Curve Campaign, a civic commissioner on the Gateshead Poverty Truth Commission, an executive member of the North East Child Poverty Commission, a member of the Royal Society of Medicine Health and Food Council, and a trustee of Feeding Britain.

Greta is the  founder and the Director of the ‘Healthy Living’ Lab at Northumbria University and has spent the last 20 years researching food insecurity, social injustice, school feeding programmes and holiday hunger programmes in the UK. She has received funding from multiple sources and has published numerous papers on school breakfast clubs, school food programmes and holiday hunger programmes in the UK.