Melissa Leach

Education

Awards and honours

• 1998: Amaury Talbot Prize of the Royal Anthropological Institute, for best book in African Anthropology, for 'Misreading the African Landscape'.
• 2012: European Association for the Study of Science and Technology Ziman Prize for public engagement with science, for STEPS Centre 'New Manifesto' initiative.
• 2016: ESRC Outstanding International Impact Award for Ebola Response Anthropology Platform.
• 2017: Leach was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to the social sciences.
• 2017: In July 2017, she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy, the United Kingdom's national academy for the humanities and social sciences.

  Membership and professional activities

• Vice-Chair of the Science Committee of Future Earth, steering development of agenda around planetary futures, sustainability and post-2015 development.
• Member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.
• Lead author of the UN Women 2014 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development on gender equality and sustainable development.
• Co-Leader, ISSC World Social Science Report 2016 on Inequalities and Social justice.
• Trustee, Malaria Consortium
• Advisory Board member, ESRC ‘Nexus Network: New connections in food, energy, water and the environment’.
• UK Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies Ebola, 2014 – 15.
• Member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Stockholm Environment Institute.

  Selected publications

• Leach, M. and Scoones, I. eds., 2015. Carbon conflicts and forest landscapes in Africa. Routledge.
• Leach, M., 2015. The Ebola Crisis and Post‐2015 Development. Journal of International Development, 27, pp. 816–834.
• Leach, M., Raworth, K. and Rockström, J., 2013. Between social and planetary boundaries: Navigating pathways in the safe and just space for humanity. World social science report, 2013, pp. 84–89.
• Fairhead, J., Leach, M. and Scoones, I., 2012. Green Grabbing: a new appropriation of nature?. Journal of Peasant Studies, 39, pp. 237–261.
• Leach, M., Scoones, I. and Wynne, B., 2005. Science and citizens: globalisation and the challenge of engagement. Zed Books.
• 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., Mearns, R. and Scoones, I., 1999. Environmental entitlements: dynamics and institutions in community-based natural resource management. World development, 27, pp. 225–247.
• Leach, M. and Mearns, R., 1996. Environmental change and policy. The Lie of the Land: challenging received wisdom on the African environment. Oxford: James Currey, pp. 1–33.
• 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