Dr Penelope Love

Senior Lecturer in Community and Public Health Nutrition, Deakin University

Penny Love is a mid-career researcher and a registered advanced accredited practising dietitian with over 25 years of national and international experience in public health nutrition. She is Co-Director for the Masters of Dietetics, School of Exercise and Nutrition (SENS) and holds a senior academic position within the Institute for Physical Activity and Nutrition Research (IPAN), at Deakin University. Her research focuses on the translation, adoption and sustained implementation of early childhood obesity prevention initiatives at scale to inform the identification of key intervention points within health and early childhood education services.

An early interest into the impacts gained through a population-wide approach of environmental and policy changes led to Penny’s PhD research developing country-specific food-based dietary guidelines for South African adults and expansion for the 0-7 year age group.  As Director Public Health Nutrition, Queensland (2007-2012), her work included a specific focus on nutrition in the early years, Indigenous nutrition, healthy lifestyles, and food security.  In 2013 Penny re-joined academia developing and delivering a national knowledge translation and exchange platform to build capacity and a community of practice to support community-level obesity prevention efforts across Australia.

Penny was recently appointed to the NMHRC Australian Dietary Guidelines Expert Committee, and sits on the steering group for the Commonwealth funded Nutritious Tools project led by University Queensland. She holds honorary affiliations with University of Sydney and University of Canberra, and has received several awards in recognition of her research, most recently the Dietitian Australia Outstanding Contribution Award (2019).

Penny Love is an Associate Investigator of the CRE, contributing to the work of Streams 1 and 3.

Read more: Dr Penny Love | Publications
Email: penny.love@deakin.edu.au
Twitter: @PenelopeVLove