Melissa Leach

Last updated

Melissa Leach
Melissa Leach2014.jpg
Born (1965-01-05) 5 January 1965 (age 59)[ citation needed ]
NationalityBritish
Alma mater School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London
Newnham College, University of Cambridge, UK
ChildrenFour
Parent(s) Penelope Jane Leach; Gerald Leach

Melissa Leach, CBE , FBA (born 5 January 1965) is a British geographer and social anthropologist. She has been the Executive Director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative since June 2024 [1] . She studies sustainability and development concerns in policy-making and has a focus on the politics of science and technology of Africa. She was previously the Director of the Institute of Development Studies (2014-2024) located on the University of Sussex campus.

Contents

Education

She earned her BA in geography with starred first honours at the University of Cambridge, and her MPhil and PhD in social anthropology from the SOAS University of London. [2] Leach co-founded and directed the ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre from 2006 to 2014. [3]

Awards and honours

Membership and professional activities

Selected publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Piot</span> Belgian microbiologist (born 1949)

Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot, is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS.

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, is a non-departmental public body (NDPB), and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience. It predominantly funds scientific research institutes and university research departments in the UK.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Environmental resource management</span> Type of resource management

Environmental resource management or environmental management is the management of the interaction and impact of human societies on the environment. It is not, as the phrase might suggest, the management of the environment itself. Environmental resources management aims to ensure that ecosystem services are protected and maintained for future human generations, and also maintain ecosystem integrity through considering ethical, economic, and scientific (ecological) variables. Environmental resource management tries to identify factors between meeting needs and protecting resources. It is thus linked to environmental protection, resource management, sustainability, integrated landscape management, natural resource management, fisheries management, forest management, wildlife management, environmental management systems, and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kissidougou</span> Sub-prefecture and town in Faranah Region, Guinea

Kissidougou is a city in southern Guinea. It is the capital of in the Kissidougou Prefecture. As of 2014 it had a population of 102,675 people.

Ash Amin, is a British academic known for his writing on urban and regional development, contemporary cultural change, progressive politics, and the collaborative economy. He holds the 1931 chair at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. Since September 2015 he has held the post of foreign secretary of the British Academy.

The Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Manchester, founded by Max Gluckman in 1947 became known among anthropologists and other social scientists as the Manchester School. Notable features of the Manchester School included an emphasis on "case studies", deriving from Gluckman's early training in law and similar to methods used in law schools. The case method involved detailed analysis of particular instances of social interaction to infer rules and assumptions. The Manchester School also read the works of Marx and other economists and sociologists and looked at issues of social justice such as apartheid and class conflict. Recurring themes included issues of conflict and reconciliation in small-scale societies and organizations, and the tension between individual agency and social structure.

Andy Stirling is Professor of science and technology policy at Sussex University. He has a background in the natural sciences, a master's degree in archaeology and social anthropology (Edinburgh) and a D.Phil. in science and technology policy (Sussex).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Institute of Development Studies</span> UK research institute

The Institute of Development Studies (IDS) is a research and learning organisation affiliated with the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, and based on its campus in Falmer, East Sussex. It delivers research and teaching in the area of development studies.

The STEPS Centre was an interdisciplinary research centre hosted at the University of Sussex, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. The Centre's research brought together development studies with science and technology studies. It was launched at Portcullis House in London on 25 June 2007 and closed in 2022.

Conservation refugees are people who are displaced from their native lands when conservation areas, such as parks and other protected areas, are created.

Elena Lieven is a British psychology and linguistics researcher and educator. She was a senior research scientist in the Department of Developmental and Comparative Psychology in Leipzig, Germany. She is also a professor in the School of Health Sciences at the University of Manchester where she is director of its Child Study Centre and leads the ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development (LuCiD).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Olga F. Linares</span> Panamanian–American academic anthropologist and archaeologist

Olga Francesca Linares was a Panamanian–American academic anthropologist and archaeologist, and senior staff scientist (emerita) at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, who supported much of her research throughout her career. She is well known for her work on the cultural ecology of Panama, and more recently in the Casamance region of Southern Senegal. She is also concerned with the social organization of agrarian systems as well as the relationship between "ecology, political economy, migration and the changing dynamics of food production among rural peoples living in tropical regions".

Environmental social science is the broad, transdisciplinary study of interrelations between humans and the natural environment. Environmental social scientists work within and between the fields of anthropology, communication studies, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, and sociology; and also in the interdisciplinary fields of environmental studies, human ecology and political ecology, social epidemiology, among others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Camilla Toulmin</span> British economist

Ann Camilla Toulmin, FRSE is a British economist and former Director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED). Her career has focused on policy research about agriculture, land, climate and livelihoods in dryland regions of Africa, particularly in Mali. She became a senior fellow of IIED in late June 2015, is an Associate of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and Professor of Practice at the Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fatima Denton</span> The Co-ordinator for the African Climate Policy Centre

Fatima Denton is a British-Gambian climatologist. She is the director at the Ghanaian branch of the United Nations University, at the UNU Institute for Natural Resources in Africa (UNU-INRA) in Accra. She focuses on innovation, science, technology and natural resource management. She partners with countries such as Benin and Liberia to develop and implement country needs assessment missions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chris Whitty</span> British physician and epidemiologist (born 1966)

Sir Christopher John MacRae Whitty is a British epidemiologist, serving as Chief Medical Officer for England and Chief Medical Adviser to the UK Government since 2019.

Marc Edelman is an academic author and professor of anthropology at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was president of the American Ethnological Society from 2017 to 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Societal transformation</span> Deep and sustained change in a society

In sociology, societal transformation refers to “a deep and sustained, nonlinear systemic change” in a society. Transformational changes can occur within a particular system, such as a city, a transport or energy system. Societal transformations can also refer to changes of an entire culture or civilization. Such transformations often include not only social changes but cultural, technological, political, and economic, as well as environmental. Transformations can be seen as occurring over several centuries, such as the Neolithic Revolution or at a rapid pace, such as the rapid expansion of megacities in China.

Green grabbing or green colonialism is the foreign land grabbing and appropriation of resources for environmental purposes, resulting in a pattern of unjust development. The purposes of green grabbing are varied; it can be done for ecotourism, conservation of biodiversity or ecosystem services, for carbon emission trading, or for biofuel production. It involves governments, NGOs, and corporations, often working in alliances. Green grabs can result in local residents' displacement from land where they live or make their livelihoods. It is considered to be a subtype of green imperialism.

The International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food) is an international non-profit association, with the goal to promote transition to sustainable food systems around the world and it was registered in Belgium in the year 2015. It was founded by Daniel et Nina Carasso, Olivier De Schutter, former UN special rapporteur on the right to food, and Emile Frison, former Director General of Bioversity International to inform debates on food system reforms around the world. It conducts research focused in the domains of political economy, nutrition, climate change, ecology, agronomy, agroecology, and economics, as well as direct involvement in political processes.

References

  1. "Professor Melissa Leach CBE appointed CCI Executive Director | Cambridge Conservation Initiative". www.cambridgeconservation.org. 28 February 2024. Retrieved 13 August 2024.
  2. Shepherd, Jessica (17 July 2007). "Melissa Leach: Village voice". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  3. "Melissa Leach". UNESCO Who's Who of Women Speakers. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  4. "Amaury Talbot Prize for African Anthropology Past Recipients". Royal Anthropological Institute. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  5. "Ebola crisis team wins award for lifesaving advice". Economic and Social Research Council. 1 July 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  6. "No. 61962". The London Gazette (Supplement). 17 June 2017. p. B9.
  7. "Elections to the British Academy celebrate the diversity of UK research". British Academy. 2 July 2017. Retrieved 29 July 2017.
  8. "Science Committee". Future Earth. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  9. "Expert Panel – IPES food". International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  10. "Gender Equality and Sustainable Development: A Pathways Approach". UN Women. 2016. Retrieved 14 March 2017.
  11. "Challenging Inequalities: Pathways to a Just World" (PDF). Unesdoc.unesco.org. 2016. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
  12. "Advisory Group". Thenexusnetwork.org. 8 February 2018. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
  13. "House of Commons - Science in emergencies: UK lessons from Ebola - Science and Technology Committee". Publications.parliament.uk. Retrieved 9 June 2018.
  14. SEI (6 March 2020). "Science Advisory Council". Stockholm Environment Institute. Retrieved 6 March 2020.