UK

Bangor University

Davey Jones

Professor of Soil and Environmental Science

Davey Jones is Professor of Soil and Environmental Science. His research focuses on nutrient cycling with emphasis on soil-plant-microbial interactions and understanding the links between land and water in relation to nutrients and pollutants.

Dave Chadwick

Professor of Sustainable Land Use Systems

Dave Chadwick is Professor in Sustainable Land Use Systems. His interests include the optimal management of fertilisers and organic resources including developing and testing strategies to minimise losses.

Peter Golyshin

Professor of Environmental Genomics

Peter Golyshin is Professor of Environmental Genomics and Director of the Centre for Environmental Biotechnology. His research focuses on the exploitation of microbial diversity and its potential for biotechnology applications, including plastic biodegradation and prospecting for novel enzymes for industrial applications. 

Roland Bol

Professor of Biogeochemistry

Roland Bol is Professor of Biochemistry. His research focuses on the soil-water-air interface in natural and agricultural systems, with particular interest in nanoparticles (including nanoplastics).

Martine Graf

Martine Graf is a PhD student and technician funded by the GCRF Plastic Legacy in Soil Project, working at Environment Centre Wales at Bangor University. She has a background in ecology and conservation and has conducted her previous studies in Germany, Sweden, and the UK. Her personal interest in plastic pollution and the subsequent effect on the environment has led her to her current position, researching the impact of plastic, used in an agricultural context, on soil, crops and microorganisms. Her research concentrates on the effect, fate, and legacy of macro- and microplastic on agroecosystems with a focus on agricultural mulch film use. She is investigating how different types of mulch films affect the soil microbial community structure, soil biochemical processes, GHG emissions and crop performance. She is also interested in the chemical degradation of mulch films and the potential microplastic pollution risk this process poses.

Michelle Jones

Project Administrator

Michelle Jones is project administrator. She has a PhD in plant ecology and has worked in research project administration for many years.

Reading University

Henny Osbahr

Henny Osbahr is Professor of International Development in the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development. She has extensive experience in agricultural innovation and rural livelihoods, food security and gender dynamics of natural resource management, rural communication services and participatory methodologies, and has worked with rural communities and institutional partners in many LMICs.

Chris Collins

Chris Collins is Professor of Environmental Chemistry and Coordinator of the NERC Soil Security Programme. His research focuses on understanding pollutant fate and transport and exposure assessment, and combines experimental data with process models and development of assessment tools.

Mondira Bhattacharya

Mondira Bhattacharya is a Senior Research Officer and Associate Lecturer at the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development at the University of Reading, UK. Her academic interests lie in food and nutritional security, rural development and policy implications on the concerned farmer segment, especially in LMICs. Before joining the University of Reading in 2020, she had worked for non-profit organisations in India for several years in various capacities. Mondira has a PhD in Economic Geography from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. In the agri-plastics project, she is engaged in researching issues related to microplastic contamination in agricultural soils and crops, especially in the LMICs where the problem is acute. For this she is working with multi-country partners, using an interdisciplinary approach to develop and promote sustainable alternatives to plasticulture and help in designing viable regional food security solutions. 

Bristol University

Richard Evershed

Richard Evershed is Professor of Biochemistry. He specialises in developing and applying state-of-the-art chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques to obtain molecular and stable isotopic information from organic compounds present in complex environmental matrices. 

Charlotte Lloyd

Charlotte Lloyd is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow. Her current research focuses on degradation and transport processes in plasticulture. 

Dr Michaela Reay

Dr Michaela Reay is a Postdoctoral Research Associate based in the Organic Geochemistry Unit in the School of Chemistry, University of Bristol. She is a biogeochemist, with expertise in stable isotope probing, and a keen interest in applying analytical chemistry to environmental questions. She completed her PhD at the University of Bristol in 2020, where she focused on using compound-specific 15N-stable isotope probing to elucidate microbial N cycling in grazed ecosystems. She subsequently moved to the University of Birmingham, working at the Birmingham Institute of Forest Research Free Air Carbon Enrichment experiment, elucidating the effect of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide on nutrient cycling in mature forests. She returned to Bristol to work on the GCRF Plastic Legacy in Soil project and will focus on using mass spectrometry to quantify and trace microplastics and associated additives from agricultural plastics, alongside investigating the impacts on nutrient cycling under plastic mulch.