Melissa Leach

Melissa Leach

"Professorial Fellow at IDS and leader of the Knowledge, Technology and Society (KNOTS) team, Melissa Leach has since 2006 directed the ESRC STEPS (Social, Technological and Environmental Pathways to Sustainability) Centre. She originally trained as a geographer (MA Cambridge) and social anthropologist (PhD London). Over the last twenty years she has been closely involved both in ethnographic fieldwork, speaking four African languages, and in extensive interdisciplinary research. This has engaged anthropology with historical, ecological and science and technology studies approaches, as well as working with foresters, agricultural and medical scientists."


 * Editorial Board, World Development

Select Publications

 * James Fairhead, Melissa Leach, Ian Scoones (eds.), Green Grabbing: A New Appropriation of Nature (Routledge, 2013).
 * Melissa Leach and Ian Scoones (2006) 'The Slow Race: Making Technology Work for the Poor', London: Demos
 * James Fairhead, and Leach, M (2003) Science, Society and Power: Environmental Knowledge and Policy in West Africa and the Caribbean, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
 * Melissa Leachand Robin Mearns (1996) The Lie of the Land: Challenging Received Wisdom on the African Environment, London: James Currey (another contributor was Allan Hoben)
 * James Fairhead and Melissa Leach (1996) Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic, London: Routledge