Biography

Fiona Dykes is Professor Emerita of Maternal and Infant Health within the Maternal and Infant Nutrition and Nurture Unit (MAINN) which she established in 2000.

Fiona is an Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University and has previously held Visiting Professorships at Chinese University of Hong Kong and Dalarna University in Sweden. Fiona has a particular interest in the global, socio-cultural and political influences upon infant and young child feeding practices; her methodological expertise is in ethnography and other qualitative research methods.

Until 2020, Fiona was the Conference Convenor and Chair of the Scientific Review Committee for the MAINN Conference, a three day, international, peer reviewed event established in 2007 and held bi-annually in the UK and, more recently, on alternate years overseas (Sydney, Sweden, Florida). Abstracts are published in Maternal and Child Nutrition, the Wiley-Blackwell published international journal. Fiona is a member of the editorial board.

Fiona is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has worked on WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, EC, DH NHS, NIHR, Wellcome Trust, British Council, British Academy Newton Fund and Australian Research Council (ARC) funded projects. Fiona is author of the monograph Breastfeeding in Hospital: Mothers, Midwives and the Production Line (Routledge) and co-author of Banking on Milk: An ethnography of donor human milk relations. She is also joint editor of several books including Infant and Young Child Feeding: Challenges to implementing a Global Strategy (Wiley-Blackwell) and Ethnographic Research in Maternal and Child Health (Routledge).