Jake Sallaway-Costello
Associate Professor in Health Promotion, Faculty of Science
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Biography
Jake Sallaway-Costello is an Associate Professor in Health Promotion, in the Division of Food, Nutrition & Dietetics. His academic expertise concerns social and behavioural constructions of the diet, and their use in the development of health promotion interventions. An interdisciplinary social scientist, Jake's teaching and research is informed by perspectives from health psychology, health sociology, and public health, and their application to health promotion.
Jake's work in public health started with a research assistantship at Food Dudes Health, whilst studying health psychology at Bangor University. As a graduate, he worked in the development of behaviour change interventions at the Centre for Activity and Eating Research in Wales, focused on increasing child fruit and vegetable consumption. Jake later worked as a researcher for the North Wales Economic Ambition Board, before commencing an academic career as a lecturer at Birmingham City University. He joined the University of Nottingham as an Assistant Professor in 2019, and became an Associate Professor in 2024. Jake is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and is active in higher education teacher development in the UK and internationally. He is a member of the Global Working Group on Salutogenesis, and is active in the use of salutogenic concepts in teaching and learning.
Beyond teaching, Jake is an innovative public health professional, developing community-level health promotion work in the UK, and planetary health policy initiatives internationally. Jake serves as a founding Co-director of a large health promoting social enterprise in the West Midlands, an asset-based community nutrition programme which has produced over 2 million meals using food destined for waste.
Teaching Summary
Jake teaches social scientific perspectives on food, nutrition, and health, for development of health promotion practice and intervention. He teaches on various modules across the BSc Nutrition,… read more
Research Summary
Jake has a PhD in Public Health from Birmingham City University, under the supervision of Kate Thomson and Anne Robbins. His thesis, "Community, culture and meat consumption: A traditional… read more
Recent Publications
CORBETT, M., SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J., ORR, J. and ELLIS, S., 2026. Empowering community-based learning in nutrition through student co-production of an ethnographic assessment resource International Journal for Students as Partners. 10(1), MAASS, R., VAANDRAGER, L. and SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J., 2025. Salutogenesis in the Context of Society. In: ERIKSSON, M., VAANDRAGER, L. and LINDSTROM, B., eds., The Hitchhiker's Guide to Salutogenesis: From the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion to Planetary Health 2nd. Springer. 72-80 SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J., MEIER MAGISTRETTI, C. and LINDSTROM, B., 2025. From the Ottawa Charter to Planetary Healt. In: ERIKSSON, M., VAANDRAGER, L. and LINDSTROM, B., eds., The Hitchhiker's Guide to Salutogenesis: From the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion to Planetary Health 2nd. Springer. 81-89
Jake teaches social scientific perspectives on food, nutrition, and health, for development of health promotion practice and intervention. He teaches on various modules across the BSc Nutrition, MNutr Nutrition & Dietetics and MSc Nutritional Sciences programs. Jake also supervises doctoral candidates studying for PhD Nutritional Science.
In undergraduate teaching, Jake is Module Convenor for BIOS2113 - Food and Society, exploring the social construction of the diet, the role of nutritionists in society, and appraisal of social food movements. He is also Module Convenor for BIOS3043 - Behavioural Nutrition and Health Promotion, concerning the psychosocial origins of dietary behaviour, and their application to public health nutrition.
Outside of the Division of Food, Nutrition & Dietetics, Jake is Module Convenor for BIOS1029 - Essential Study Skills. This is a core onboarding module taught across the School of Biosciences.
Jake is the Research Experiences Lead for undergraduate dissertations in nutrition and dietetics, and postgraduate dissertations in nutritional science and clinical nutrition.
Jake also teaches on the following modules:
- BIOS2072 - Professional Skills for Nutritionists
- BIOS2039 - Practical Techniques in Human Nutrition
- BIOS2109 - Communication Skills & Educational Methods
- BIOS3019 - Research Skills in Dietetics
- BIOS3028 - Nutrition Across the Lifespan
- BIOS4065 - Research Skills in Nutrition
- BIOS4070 - Public Health Nutrition
Jake is a skilled pedagogist and is active in the scholarship of learning and teaching, particularly in the teaching of social science for allied health professionals. His pedagogic interests include authentic assessment, including intervention design and ethnographic tasks, and emancipatory pedagogies which prepare students to practice in the new arenas of public health.
Current Research
Jake has a PhD in Public Health from Birmingham City University, under the supervision of Kate Thomson and Anne Robbins. His thesis, "Community, culture and meat consumption: A traditional ethnography of meat and the new materialisms for planetary health" was an ethnographic investigation of the sociocultural meanings of meat in the Western-pattern diet, employing New Materialist Social Inquiry to explore reduced meat consumption and sustainable diets, for health promotion practice.
An ethnographer, Jake's methodological interests concern the investigation of health cultures and health activism through naturalist participatory methods, particularly through participant-researcher relationships facilitated by social enterprise and community development work. Jake is a post-qualitative methodologist with broad interests in analytical processes valuing the material nature of health, and use of social theory to develop post-human analytical tools to understand the diet.
Jake is actively engaged in the critique and development of social theory for health promotion, focused on the use of salutogenesis to design planetary health policy and community development practice.
Jake is currently supervising the following doctoral studies:
CORBETT, M., SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J., ORR, J. and ELLIS, S., 2026. Empowering community-based learning in nutrition through student co-production of an ethnographic assessment resource International Journal for Students as Partners. 10(1), MAASS, R., VAANDRAGER, L. and SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J., 2025. Salutogenesis in the Context of Society. In: ERIKSSON, M., VAANDRAGER, L. and LINDSTROM, B., eds., The Hitchhiker's Guide to Salutogenesis: From the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion to Planetary Health 2nd. Springer. 72-80 SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J., MEIER MAGISTRETTI, C. and LINDSTROM, B., 2025. From the Ottawa Charter to Planetary Healt. In: ERIKSSON, M., VAANDRAGER, L. and LINDSTROM, B., eds., The Hitchhiker's Guide to Salutogenesis: From the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion to Planetary Health 2nd. Springer. 81-89 SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J, 2022. Being Fat: Women, Weight, and Fat Activism in Canada. Sociology of Health & Illness. MARCANO-OLIVIER, M, SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J, MCWILLIAMS, L, HORNE, P, VICTOR, S and ERJAVEC, M, 2021. Changes in the nutritional content of children’s lunches after the Food Dudes healthy eating programme. Journal of Nutritional Science. 10(40), MEIER-MAGISTRETTI, C, SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J, FATIMA, S and HARTNOLL, R, 2021. People-Planet-Health: promoting grassroots movements through participatory co-production. Global Health Promotion. 28(4), 83–87 SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J, CORBETT, M, LARKIN, A, MELLARD, A, MURRAY, L and SELLENS, K, 2021. Vegan faces in anthroparchal spaces: Student reflections on educational experiences of veganism in nutrition sciences. Journal of Vegan Sociology. 1(1), 74-84 MEIER-MAGISTRETTI, C, SALLAWAY-COSTELLO, J, MARIC, F, ROBERT, A, RIGOTE, G, BERTOLINI, A, MACHADO, A.D, CONTU, P, CHIOU, S, SHILTON, T, MARTIN, O, DEPOUX, A, JOSEPH, A.T and JOSHI, A, 2021. People-Planet-Health: A position paper to support policy development on planetary health and wellbeing by the World Health Organisation. Position papers of the International Union of Health Promotion and Education. 1-12