Rate My Professor Rory Padfield

Dr. Rory Padfield is an Associate Professor in Sustainability and Business at the University of Leeds, School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability, Faculty of Environment, and a member of the Sustainability Research Institute. He earned his PhD in Geography, MSc in Environmental Engineering, and BSc in Geography from Newcastle University, with his doctoral research involving ten months of fieldwork in Zambia on water sector reforms. Padfield's interdisciplinary background spans geography and environmental engineering, complemented by six years as a lecturer at the Malaysia-Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, following environmental consultancy work. His experience in Southeast Asia began during his MSc with a placement at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia studying traditional rainwater harvesting, and he has developed extensive networks through fieldwork in sub-Saharan Africa and the Global South.

Padfield's research examines supply chain and natural resource governance, sustainable consumption and production, and corporate sustainability across business scales, with a political ecology lens on ethics, social and environmental responsibility, and local-global political economy. Key focuses include adoption of sustainability standards by small and medium-sized food manufacturers in Malaysia and Indonesia, sustainability impacts of water commercialization in Malaysian utilities, palm oil traceability in UK supply chains, and peatland issues. He leads projects such as 'Empires of sustainability' investigating Sabah's sustainable palm oil policy for smallholder farmers, 'Flex crop traceability and sustainability' in UK catering supply chains, 'Sustainability Stories' on communication in creative industries, and 'Food on Film', a community-led filmmaking initiative on Bradford food sustainability. As Programme Leader for the MSc Sustainability and Business and Co-Research Lead for Business and Organisations for Sustainable Societies (BOSS), he teaches on the Environment and Business BA, MSc Sustainability and Consultancy, and MSc Sustainability and Business. Notable publications include co-editing A Research Agenda for Sustainability and Business (Edward Elgar, 2022), 'Patterns and Causes of Food Waste in the Hospitality and Food Service Sector' (Sustainability, 2019), and 'Conceptual framework for the study of food waste generation and prevention in the hospitality sector' (Waste Management, 2016), contributing to over 2600 citations on Google Scholar.