Ilse de Jager's work is on food systems for healthy diets, focussing on the food environment, consumer-behaviour practices, and fruit and vegetables in low- and middle-income countries. Related to these research topics, she is developing a MOOC (massive open online course). She is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Division of Human Nutrition, Wageningen University & Research.
In 2019, she completed her PhD at the Division of Human Nutrition and the Plant Production Systems group at Wageningen University. She started her PhD research in 2014 after obtaining her Master of Science degree in Human Nutrition at Wageningen University. She studied the impacts of agriculture on improving diets and nutritional status of vulnerable groups from rural households in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular focusing on the potential of grain legumes. She conducted her PhD research within the context of the N2Africa project that was one of the winning projects of the 2013 Harvesting Nutrition Contest initiated by the World Bank.