KU Leuven

Christophe Matthys 

Christophe Matthys (°1975) is currently associate professor KU Leuven and scientific coordinator of the clinical nutrition unit University Hospitals Leuven. He got a bio-science engineer degree (1998) and PhD in Medical Sciences (2006) (Ghent University, Belgium). Following his appointment at Ghent University he moved to the Institute of Food Sciences and Health, Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand where he was appointed as a lecturer. Between April 2009 September 2011, he worked as Senior Scientific Project Manager at ILSI Europe (private sector). Since October 2011 he started working part-time as assistant professor human nutrition at KU Leuven and part-time as scientific coordinator of the Clinical Nutrition Unit, University Hospitals Leuven.

His research focus on both transnutritional care and secondary prevention, while understanding the underlying mechanisms. His scientific vision is to provide scientific evidence through nutrition/food/diet to tackle metabolic imbalance and consider nutrition/food/diet as an adjuvant therapy to the current medical therapy. He co-coordinates a unique academic group that combines pre-clinical and clinical research tools on the interplay of nutrition and different chronic pathologies. Currently Christophe Matthys’ research is funded through internal KU Leuven funding, Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO), Vlaams Fonds voor Innovatie en Ondernemen (VLAIO), Horizon 2020 (EIT Food & EIT Health) and VLIR-UOS. He is chair of the KU Leuven Fund ‘Nutrition’, a donation-based fund to stimulate research on nutrition.

Christophe Matthys is a non-funded member of an advisory board of Smart With Food, AJUNEC, Belgian Health and Nutrition Conference, Instituut Gezond Leven, Vlaamse Beroepsvereniging van Diëtisten, a non-funded board member of the Belgian Nutrition Society and the Flemish Society of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism, non-funded associate editor of Clinical Nutrition ESPEN and Frontiers in Nutrition. Recipient of travel/accommodation expenses and small participation fee (<100€/meeting) as member of working groups of the Belgian Superior Health Council and Belgian Federal Agency of the Safety of the Food Chain. Recipient of travel/accommodation expenses as member of the Scientific Advisory Body of the Joint Programme Initiative Healthy Diet, Healthy Life, as co-chair ILSI Europe Task Force Dietary Intake and Exposure, as member ILSI Europe Task Force Nutrient Intake Optimisation and member of Working Groups of the Eurorpean Food Safety Authority. Recipient of honoraria (<500€/year) as Editor in Chief of Food Science and Law and as active member of the advisory board of NutriNews (Belgian Nutrition Information Center). Recipient of honoraria as jury-member of nutrition-related awards and reviewing EU-grants. Recipient of royalties form a textbook (Handboek Voeding, ACCO). Honoraria are used to support research of PhD Students.

Tim Smits 

Tim Smits is the current vice-dean of Education for the Faculty of Social Sciences, the former director of the Institute for Media Studies (2014-2019), and the former programme director of the Master in Corporate Communication (2014-2019). With a background in Social Psychology (MSc & PhD), Statistics (MSc), Marketing, Ethics and Communication, he joined the KU Leuven Institute for Media Studies in 2010 as a tenure track professor and he now is a full professor in Persuasion and Marketing Communication at the institute.

Tim published on various topics within these fields, but his main research focus pertains to persuasion and marketing communication dynamics that involve health and/or consumer empowerment and how these are affected by situational differences or manipulations. He also has a more methodological line of research on science replicability. Concerning food, the focus in Tim’s research is predominantly on food marketing and food persuasion among children and adolescents, disentangling the way commercial communication persuades and trying to apply the same persuasive principles to promote healthy and durable consumption and food attitudes.

Tim Smits sometimes provides strategic communication consultancy in the domain of food; consultancy fees are used to support research activities and junior researchers. In this regard, he provided consultancy for the development of new Flemish food recommendation (the food triangle), and for Alpro. He also received a research grant from Alpro Foundation to investigate how social media affect adolescent’s perception of food, both in general and specifically for plant-based foods.

Nelleke Teughels

Nelleke Teughels (°1982) obtained a Master's degree in Art History and Archaeology in 2005 (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). In 2006 she became a member of FOST (Social & Cultural Food Studies, Vrije Universiteit Brussel) and in September 2011 she defended her dissertation on the advertising strategies of modern food retailing (1867-1940). Between 2012 and 2016 she carried out postdoctoral research for the FWO-Vlaanderen, analyzing the food that was presented and served by the Belgian participants at the world exhibitions in Belgium and abroad between 1851 and 2010 and investigating whether the construction and promotion of a "traditional food culture" was used as an instrument in the legitimation and identity construction of the Belgian nation. In September 2015, she started working as a doctor-assistant at the research group Cultural History since 1750 at KU Leuven, where she taught classes and seminars in the theory and methodology of history. She worked as part-time guest professor at Vrije Universiteit Brussel between 2016 and 2018, were she taught classes in the theory and methodology of history and a course on ‘Food Traditions & Innovations’, which was part of the International Master Program: Food History. Since October 2018, she is working as a postdoctoral researcher on an EOS-project ‘B-Magic. The Magic Lantern and its Cultural Impact as a Visual Mass Medium in Belgium’.

As a member of FOST (Social & Cultural Food Studies), she collaborated with national and international organizations, such as CAG – Centrum voor Agrarische Geschiedenis (KU Leuven), IEHCA – Institut Européen d’Histoire et des Cultures de l’Alimentation (Université de Tours), ICREFH – International Commission for Research into European Food History. Since 2006, she organized several seminars and masterclasses on the history and social and cultural meaning of food, welcoming historians, sociologists, chemists and philosophers. Together with Yves Segers (CAG), she supervises a PhD research into the cultural history of snack foods in the Netherlands. In addition, since 2018 she is editor-in-chief of Contemporanea, the journal of the Belgische Vereniging voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis/Association belge d’Histoire Contemporaine, of which she is the chairwoman. Between 2017 and 2018, she was chair of the History section of the Koninklijke Zuid-Nederlandse Maatschappij voor Taal- en Letterkunde en Geschiedenis. Since 2012, she is a non-funded member of the scientific advisory board of ETWIE – Expertisecentrum voor Technisch, Industrieel en Wetenschappelijk Erfgoed.

Jules Vrinten

Jules Vrinten is a PhD researcher at KU Leuven, Dept. Of Communication Sciences. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in Theoretical and Experimental Psychology (Magna Cum Laude) in 2014 and his master’s degree in Health Promotion (Cum Laude) in 2015 both at Ghent University. He currently works on a reseach project that aims to determine which influencers affect food choices in Flanders and to also facilitate healthy and sustainable food choices. Jules Vrinten is a member of the research group MIOS.