Professor Melissa Leach FBA
- Fellow type
- UK Fellow
- Year elected
- 2017
- Sections
- Anthropology and Geography
Summary
Melissa Leach is the Executive Director of Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) and Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge. She co-founded and co-directed the ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre from 2006 to 2014, with its pioneering pathways approach to innovation, sustainability and development issues.
She was lead author of UN Women’s World Survey on the Role of Women in Economic Development 2014, and of the World Social Science Report 2016 on 'Challenging Inequalities'. She co-founded the Ebola Response Anthropology Platform and was lead social scientist in the UK and WHO Ebola scientific advisory committees during 2014-15.
Professor Leach is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES-food), the Strategic Coherence of ODA Research (SCOR) Board, the ESRC International Development Advisory Group (EIDEG) and the MRC Global Health Group.
Current post
Cambridge Conservation Initiative Executive Director
Director, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex
Past appointments
Science Committee of Future Earth Vice-chair
2012 - 2017
Other Fellows of the British Academy
Professor Jennifer Robinson FBA
Postcolonial critique of urban studies; comparative urbanism and global urban studies; rethinking urban development politics from South African, UK and African contexts; transnational and state actors in urban development.
Professor Kirsten Hastrup FBA
The entanglement of natural & social histories in Iceland & Greenland; the anthropological contribution to climate change research; the history of Artic anthropology; the foundations of anthropological knowledge
Professor Nicholas Frank Pidgeon FBA
Environmental risk perception, risk communication and engaging citizens with sustainability and technology policy choices and behaviours; including climate change, low carbon energy, net zero technologies, and emerging technologies
