Biographies

Short biographies of the four speakers at the London Dissemination Meeting - Richard Shepherd, Anne Arvola, Salvador Ruiz and John Thøgersen.

	Richard Shepherd is a Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Food, Consumer Behaviour and Health Research Centre at the University of Surrey. His research has centred on factors influencing human food choice and has included the application of psychological models of attitude and attitude change to food choice, the perception of risks associated with foods and risk communication. He currently leads the EU project on ‘Consumer decision-making on organic products (CONDOR)’ and UK projects on attitudes towards genomics and food risk communication, in addition to his involvement in a range of projects on aspects of consumer behaviour and risk perception.
	Anne Arvola MSc (Social Psychology), is a social scientist by training (social psychology). Since 1996 the focus of her work has been on food related consumer research. Her research aims to understand consumer acceptance, choice and consumption of food, and examines consumers' food related perceptions, attitudes, beliefs and values. Her studies have focused mainly on the influence of a novel technology, organic production method or local production on the acceptance and perceptions of the food.
	Salvador Ruiz Ph.D., University of Murcia, is Associate   Professor of Marketing. His research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Advertising, Journal of Business Research, International Marketing Review, Journal of Marketing Management, and European Journal of Marketing. He has also presented papers at agricultural and marketing conferences (both domestic and international) and is the co-author and editor of several books. As a visiting Professor in the Marketing Department of Columbia University (USA), his main research interests are consumer behaviour and agricultural marketing. He has also acted as a consultant for Spanish companies and associations, some of them related to the agricultural sector.
	John Thøgersen PhD, dr. merc., is Professor of Economic Psychology, Aarhus School of Business (ASB), Department of Marketing & Statistics and the MAPP-centre. He is the co-ordinator of the Marketing and Sustainability Research Group at the Department of Marketing & Statistics and responsible for the Danish part of the EU 5 th Framework Programme project ‘Consumer decision-making on organic products (CONDOR)’.   He has published extensively in the consumption and environment research area in Journal of Economic Psychology, Journal of Consumer Policy , Psychology & Marketing , Environment & Behaviour, Journal of Environmental Psychology ,International Journal of Research in Marketing , and Business Strategy and the Environment, among others. He is Editor-Elect of Journal of Consumer Policy, a peer-reviewed journal published by Springer.