New PhD student at MGMT - Maria Gouela

Hi everyone, my name is Mary! I come from beautiful Greece, more specifically from Thessaloniki, a vibrant coastal city rich in culture!

I am very happy to have started my PhD on February 1st at the department in Aarhus under the supervision of Pol Chrysochou and Sascha Steinmann. However, I have actually been here since August, when I began a six-month internship through the EIT Food Fellowship under the supervision of Pol Chrysochou.

I hold a BSc in Nutrition and Dietetics and an MSc in Nutrition in Health and Disease. An Erasmus internship in Barcelona, Spain, and an academic visit to Reading, UK, further strengthened my passion for research, particularly in the areas of nutrition and sustainability. Through my experience as a research assistant, as well as in various roles, such as a nutritionist-dietitian, I became increasingly interested in understanding how and why people change their behaviour.

Pursuing a PhD has been a lifelong ambition of mine. My project focuses on “communicating the environmental impacts of foods.” Specifically, I aim to explore how personalized, basket-level feedback on food choices can improve consumer understanding and encourage more sustainable dietary behaviour, building on my previous work aiming for real-world impact.

Outside academia, I enjoy spending time with my little daughter, exploring Aarhus and Denmark, cooking, going for walks, trying new foods, going to the cinema, doing sports, and relaxing with a good book or a podcast.