Sally Brooks

Research Information

Sally has been working in, researching and teaching international development for more than 25 years. Her research bridges the fields of development studies and science and technology studies (STS) to critically examine decision making in globalised networks formed around technocratic visions of agrarian change and development; paying particular attention to issues of accountability and responsiveness to local contexts. The, often disproportionate, influence of philanthropic foundations in these networks has been an ongoing theme. Past projects have studied interventions in smallholder agriculture, crop improvement (‘conventional’ and transgenic), nutrition, bioenergy, and financial inclusion and ‘fintech’. Some of this research involved extended periods of fieldwork, in Kenya and the Philippines. She is author of the monograph Rice Biofortification: Lessons for Global Science and Development (Earthscan 2010); and has published in New Political Economy, Third World Quarterly, Sociologia Ruralis, Journal of Peasant Studies, East Asian Science,Technology and Society (EASTS), and Climatic Change.

She previously held posts at the University of York as lecturer and senior research fellow;and as a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex. Before this worked with CIDSE (Coopération Internationale pour le Développement et la Solidarité), Save the Children Fund Australia, Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO), and various organisations working in the fields of rural development, integrated conservation and development, micro-enterprise, peace building, human rights, gender and development, and the training of development managers in Cambodia, Vietnam and Papua New Guinea. 

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