Melissa Leach - Curriculum Vitae#
Experience and Interests:
Melissa Leach FBA is Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex which under her leadership ranks Number 1 for Development Studies (QS World University Rankings 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019). As an anthropologist she has thirty years of long-term ethnographic research experience in West Africa, speaking four local languages. Her interdisciplinary, policy-engaged research links sustainability, environment, health and gender, with particular interests in local knowledge and power, and she has initiated and led many internationally-collaborative research and policy programmes.
Educational qualifications:
- 1990 PhD Social Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS)
- 1987 MPhil Qualifying Examination, Social Anthropology (distinction), SOAS
- 1985 BA (Hons) Geography, class I* (distinction), University of Cambridge\
Employment:
- April 2014 - Director, Institute of Development Studies (IDS)
- August 2000 - Professorial Fellow, IDS
- May 1990 - Fellow, IDS
Selected external roles:
- Strategic Coherence of ODA Research (SCOR) Board, Independent member
- International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-Food)
- UK ESRC International Development Advisory Group
- Stockholm Environment Institute Science Council
- Future Earth, Vice Chair of Science Committee, 2012 - 2017
- UN Women, Lead author of 2014 World Survey
- World Social Science Report 2016 on Challenging Inequalities, co-leader
Selected Recent Research Grants:
- 2019 – 2011 PI, Pandemic Preparedness: Concepts and practices in tackling deadly diseases in Africa. Wellcome Trust Collaborative Awards, £1.5 million
- 2016 ongoing Co-I, Social Science in Humanitarian Emergencies, UNICEF/USAID, c.$600K
- 20014 – 15 Co-I, Ebola Response Anthropology Platform, Wellcome/DFID/SCF R2HC (with London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine), £219, 000
- 2006-2016 Director/PI, ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre, £9.4 million over 10 years
- 2012 - 2015 Overall PI, Dynamic Drivers of Disease in Africa Consortium, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Kenya, Zambia, Zimbabwe, ESPA (NERC/DFID/ESRC), £3.8 million
- 2010 – 2012 Co-I, Anthropogenic Dark Earths in Africa? Studies in Liberia, Guinea, Ghana, ESRC. £450,000
