dr. PA (Pieternel) Luning

Pieternel Luning is an Associate Professor in the Food Quality & Design group.

She is co-founder of the MSc program Food Quality Management (started in 2003), which yearly attracts circa 40-50 MSc students from Europe and beyond. Since 2006, she developed an interdisciplinary research program in Food Quality Management, with the techno-managerial approach as the leading research methodology. It comprises the integrated analysis of food and human behaviour and their impact on food quality, safety, and integrity.

Her main research areas encompass food safety and quality management systems (effectiveness, sustainability, digitalisation, etc), food safety culture and hygiene behaviour, the interplay between food safety governance and FSMS, risk-based auditing, and food quality risks. We build expertise in interdisciplinary diagnostic tools to assess QMS/FSMS, conceptual modelling, social network analysis (Net-Map methodology) of complex systems, social labs, qualitative data collection methods and analysis, triangulation, etc. She is a (co) promotor of PhD students and more than 30 graduated under her supervision.

She participated/is still participating in multiple European, National, and Global projects including Trustfood (EU 2020), FoodSafety4EU (EU 2020), NWO-WOTRO LIQUID, Veg-i-trade (7th EU), Sensory Specific Satiation (STW, program), Pathogen Combat (6th EU), PROFETAS (STW program). She co-designed the Food Fraud Vulnerability Assessment tool for the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), contributed to the GSFI Food Safety Culture position paper, and co-founded the Food Safety Culture science group ‘Salus’ with scientists from Europe, North America, and Africa participating.

She is the author of several books including the ‘Food Quality Management; technological and managerial principles and practices’, which is used in multiple courses in the MFQ program. She wrote many scientific papers in the field of food quality management and beyond (see Research Gate)

Pieternel studied Food Chemistry and Microbiology at the Wageningen University (WU) in the Netherlands. After her study, she worked as post MSc graduate on a flavour project for the food industry followed by a function as project manager at the (now-called) Food & Biobased Research, where she did her PhD on the flavour of fresh and processed bell peppers. Thereafter, she worked as a post-doc in flavour research for Unilever Vlaardingen. Subsequently, she was employed as product Manager of "Innovative Packaging" at TNO Research and Nutrition Institute. Since 1999, she has been engaged in the ‘Food Quality & Design’ group at Wageningen University and has become Associate Professor since 2006.