Bio

I am an ICREA research professor based at ICTA-UAB since 2022. I trained as an anthropologist at UCL, where I wrote my PhD under Kathy Homewood’s supervision. I then worked at the Geography Departments of the Universities of Cambridge (on a post-doc with Bill Adams) and Oxford before moving to the University of Manchester (at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, now Global Development Institute) in 2005 and then University of Sheffield in 2015 (directing the then Sheffield Institute for International Development, now Institute of Global Sustainable Development).

Most of my research has been in Tanzania, where I have worked on livelihood change, natural resource governance, microfinance and institutional performance.  But I have also worked in South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and India. My broader interests include work on global overviews of the social impacts of protected areas, media and conservation, sectoral studies of NGOs and development data. I have also worked on celebrity and development, based largely on research in the UK.

I am happiest conducting long term field research in remote areas of East Africa but I also learn much from studying organizations and the occasional plush fundraising event. My books include: Fortress Conservation (2002), Nature Unbound (with Rosaleen Duffy and Jim Igoe, 2008),  Celebrity and the Environment (2009), Celebrity Advocacy and International Development (2014), Prosperity in Rural Africa? (2021, with Christine Noe) and Contested Sustainability (2022, with Stefano Ponte and Christine Noe)