Maddy is an ESRC WRDTP Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Department of Health Sciences, University of York. The Fellowship expands her previous work on food aid and food insecurity in multi-faith, multi-ethnic contexts. This includes the completion of a monograph, Hunger, Racism and Religion in the UK; the development of a network around race, food insecurity and food aid; and further impact-related work in Bradford.

Maddy is an expert in UK food aid and food insecurity, in particular its relationship with wider economic and ethnic inequalities. She has published widely on food insecurity in developed countries; food aid, including food banks; and food insecurity and food aid in relation to ethnicity and religion.
She is founder and former Chair of the York Food Justice Alliance, a cross-sector partnership addressing food insecurity at the local level, and Co-Chair of the Independent Food Aid Network, a representative body of independent food aid providers. She is a regular commentator on food insecurity, food aid and surplus food on local and national media.

Maddy has previously held research positions in academia – most recently within IKnowFood – and the Third Sector, including The Equality Trust and the Resolution Foundation. She trained in Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge and Social Policy at the London School of Economics. Maddy holds a PhD in Health Sciences from the University of York.

Research interests: The demography and lived experience of food insecurity in the UK; ethnic and religious variations in food insecurity and the use of food aid in the UK; the interaction of neoliberalism, food insecurity and food aid; mixed methods; co-production and participatory action research.