Inaugural professorial lecture of Professor Claire Griffiths

Join Professor Claire Griffiths as she reflects on 24 years at Leeds Beckett, tracing her shift from siloed research to interdisciplinary, innovative, system approaches.

Claire will begin by sharing her journey into academia, arriving at Leeds Beckett in 2002 as an Undergraduate student and now celebrating her professorship as one of her proudest milestones.

She will highlight the value of integrating diverse forms of knowledge, perspectives, data, and methods to advance understanding of complex real-world challenges, demonstrating how this shift has strengthened research, informed policy, and enhanced practice. Claire will reflect on how working across disciplinary and sector boundaries has reshaped her thinking, leading to the adoption of innovative methods, collaborative partnerships, and system perspectives.

Through this personal reflection, Claire will show how embracing systems thinking can drive more meaningful and sustainable change.

This lecture is part of Leeds Beckett University's inaugural professional lecture series.

You can book to attend this event online here.

Professor Claire Griffiths

Claire's Leeds Beckett journey started over 20 years ago as an undergraduate student, and she is delighted to be taking on the role as Co-Director of the Obesity Institute, to drive forward the ambitious mission; to improve the lives of people living with obesity.

Claire's interests are driven by the question; How do we implement and evaluate a systems approach to address population obesity, in real world settings; creating systemic, transformational, long-term systems change, that is feasible and affordable.

More specifically she wants to understand how we shift from the theoretical application of a complex systems approach to real world implementation, application, and evaluation. We can only achieve this by strengthening interdisciplinary research, breaking discipline silos and identifying creative ways to broaden inclusion and strengthen engagement and partnerships with all stakeholders, including people with lived experience of obesity, communities, practitioners, and policymakers.

Claire's ambition is to provide stakeholders with the foundation to implement a systems approach to obesity, providing practice-based evidence to address real-world challenges of obesity and drive positive system change.

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Host or Publisher Carnegie School of Sport