Professor Leach, Melissa

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Bio

Melissa Leach is Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex. She directed from 2006 – 2014 the interdisciplinary, internationally-collaborative ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre. As an anthropologist she has thirty years of long-term ethnographic research experience in West Africa, focusing on eastern Sierra Leone (Mende), Guinea, Liberia and the Gambia, speaking four local languages. Her interdisciplinary, policy-engaged research links environment, agriculture, health, technology and gender, with particular interests in knowledge, power and the politics of science and policy processes. Recent research and publications focus on the politics of green transformations; forest-climate change relations, and the anthropology and ecology of zoonotic disease (including Ebola). She is currently vice-chair of the Science Committee of Future Earth; a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-food), and co-leading the 2016 World Social Science Report.

Education

1990 PhD Social Anthropology, School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) University of London, UK

1987 MPhil Qualifying Examination, Social Anthropology (distinction) SOAS, UK

1985 BA (Hons) Geography, class I* (distinction) University of Cambridge, UK

Publications

Leach, M. (ed), 2015, Gender Equality and Sustainable Development. London: Routledge.
Leach, M. and I. Scoones (eds), 2015, Carbon Conflicts and Forest Landscapes in Africa. London: Routledge.
Scoones, I., M. Leach and P. Newell, 2015 (eds) The Politics of Green Transformations. London: Routledge.
Fairhead, J., M. Leach and I. Scoones (eds), 2013, Green Grabbing: A new appropriation of nature. London: Routledge.
Dry, S. And M. Leach (eds), 2010, Epidemics: Science, Governance and Social Justice. London: Earthscan

Leach, M., I. Scoones and A. Stirling, 2010, Dynamic Sustainabilities: Technology, Environment, Social Justice. London:
Earthscan
Leach, M. And J. Fairhead, 2007, Vaccine Anxieties: Global Science, Child Health and Society. London: Earthscan.
Leach, M. and I. Scoones, 2006, The Slow Race: Making science and technology work for the poor. London: Demos.
Leach, M., I. Scoones and B. Wynne (eds), 2005, Science and Citizens: Globalisation and the Challenge of Engagement.
London and New York: Zed Press.
Fairhead, J. and M. Leach, 2003, Science, Society and Power: Environmental Knowledge and Policy in West Africa and the
Caribbean. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Berkhout, F., M. Leach and I. Scoones (eds), 2003, Negotiating Environmental Change: New Perspectives from Social
Science. London: Edward Elgar.
Fairhead, J., T. Geysbeek, S. Holsoe and M. Leach, 2003, African-American Exploration in West Africa: Four nineteenth
century diaries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Fairhead, J. and M. Leach, 1998, Reframing Deforestation: Global Analysis and Local Realities – Studies in West Africa.
London: Routledge.
Fairhead, J. and M. Leach, 1996, Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.
Leach, M. and R. Mearns, 1996, The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment. Oxford:
James Currey Publishers Ltd. and New York: Heinemann
Leach, M., 1994, Rainforest Relations: Gender and Resource use among the Mende of Gola, Sierra Leone. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press and Washington: Smithsonian Institution

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Professor Leach, Melissa

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