Global development academic and practitioner with 30 years’ experience. Joined the Department of Social Policy and Social Work in 2012 from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex where she was a postdoctoral researcher with the STEPS centre. Previously worked as a development practitioner and consultant for many years. Lecturer (research and teaching) and Programme Director of the online MPA International Development between 2014 and 2017 and Senior Research Fellow on the Social Transformative Research Informing Processes of Environmental Science (STRIPES) project between 2018 and 2020. Honorary fellow with the School for Business and Society/SPSW since 2017 and a member of the Interdisciplinary Global Development Centre (IGDC).

Research interests include: 

Political economy of global development – interested in development techno-politics; the marketisation and financialisation of development; and the role of philanthropic foundations; with a particular focus on smallholder agriculture and rural development. This work has been published in Economy and Society, Sociologia Ruralis, The Journal of Peasant Studies, New Political Economy, Business and Society, Third World Quarterly, Climatic Change, various edited collections, and the monograph Rice Biofortification: Lessons for Global Science and Development (Routledge).

Rural sociology and politics – interested in drivers of authoritarian populist mobilisation in rural Europe. Contributions include an analysis of the influence of rural politics on the Brexit vote, and a co-authored article on varieties of ‘actually existing’ right-wing populism in rural Europe. Recent work contributes to an emerging body of work on rural ‘emptiness’ in a study of its gendered impacts in a remote region of Northern Albania. This work has been published in Sociologia Ruralis and The Journal of Peasant Studies.

On the Council of Global Justice Now and Academic Advisory Group of Another Europe is Possible.

Past projects: 

STRIPES: Social Transformative Research Informing Processes of Environmental Science Co-production of knowledge in the Case of the Granbio Advanced Bio-refinery in Alagoas, Northeast Brazil (PI: Brown, E. J.)

BRITISH ACADEMY

31/01/18 → 31/01/20