Dr Sophia Komninou
Swansea University, Department of Psychology - College of Human & Health Science;
Psychology & Eating behaviour
Dr Sophia Komninou is an interdisciplinary early career researcher with a background on Nutrition and Dietetics with specialization in Obesity and Weight Management. Her research work falls into the area of Health Psychology and Public Health and focuses on the impact of prenatal nutrition and parental feeding practices, both milk feeding and weaning, on infants’ and toddlers’ eating behaviour.
More recently, her research is looking into the emotional and practical experience of families when feeding their babies and how public health policies can help reduce the stigma around feeding babies and toddlers and promote mother and infant wellbeing.
She is currently a Lecturer on Infant and Child Public Health at Swansea where she is teaching quantitative research methods and nutrition and growth related modules in a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes.
How did you get to your current position?
I am currently a Lecturer on Infant and Child public health and I like to think myself as an interdisciplinary researcher. My background is in Nutrition; however I was always interested in learning more about our behaviours around food. Which lead me to do a PhD in the development of flavour preferences in the Psychology department in the University of Liverpool. In this department, and with daily interactions with researchers from a psychology background Ideveloped my interests further and started looking at emotions around infant feeding. So I decided to combine everything together and get to public health, which is what I do here in Swansea University.
Who inspired you to a career in research in STEM?
My aunt likes to say that I got interested in science first when she took me to the Natural History Museum to see the dinosaur skeleton as a birthday present for my second birthday. I am not sure this was the moment, but I grew up loving learning all about biology. In secondary school I remember learning about genetics which blew my mind! While I was in school I wanted to be a geneticist or a biologist, however I chose nutrition at the end because I felt it gave me more options in the future, which on the hind side was so different than I imagined at 17!
What is the most fascinating aspect of your research/work?
I think the thing that always fascinates me and make me fall in love is the constant exploration and discovery. Everyday you learn something new and the things you can learn are endless. I always love inspiring my students to be curious and to see the value of evidence-based practices both in their work and in their everyday lives. The moment you can see that click in a student’s mind and things falling into place is pure magic that you witness and it always makes me so excited!
If you could change one thing in the scientific culture right now, what would it be?
I think the biggest problem in science and in academia in general is that is very difficult to have a healthy work life balance unless you are ruthless about protecting your time. Sometimes this is viewed as lack of dedication in your job, but most people are better at their job when they are happy, rested and fulfilled. We all from time to time talk about how busy we are and that there is not enough time during the day to do it all, but we occasionally need to step back and re evaluate what is really important, and that is cultivating relationships that canhelp us thrive in and out of work.
Can you share more about yourself, what do you do outside your research, eg hobbies/other?
I love crafting and I love dancing. I can probably try every craft under the sun but I mostly knit, sew and embroider. I hope that one day I will have a mostly handmade wardrobe. Since I started sewing my own clothes I learned so much about sustainability in the fashion industry and I have changed a lot of my practices to align with my values regarding ethics and sustainability. It is a topic I can talk for hours! I am also a huge ballet geek. Ballet was my happy place since I was little. It is something so different from my day to day life, but at the same time I keep finding weird similarities of how thingswork.