Melissa Leach

Melissa Leach is the Executive Director of the Cambridge Conservation Initiative, a collaboration between ten world-leading nature and biodiversity organizations and the University of Cambridge, where she is a Professor of Social Anthropology. Her international experience combines thirty years of ethnographic work in West Africa, along with engagements and networks across Africa, South Asia, China, and beyond. Melissa has led interdisciplinary, policy-engaged programs and consortia in the fields of sustainability transformations, forests and agriculture, global health, food systems, and social and gender equity — with a particular interest in the politics of knowledge and policy processes. From 2014 to 2024, she was Director of the Institute of Development Studies and previously co-founded and co-directed the ESRC STEPS Centre. Her international roles include co-leading the International Science Council’s Fellows network, leadership on UN reports, and membership of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems.