Stuart Gillespie

Stuart Gillespie has four decades of experience in food, nutrition and development since his first position as nutrition coordinator in a rural development project in southern India (1984-86). After acquiring a PhD in Human Nutrition from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1988, he spent four years with the UN Standing Committee on Nutrition in Geneva, two years with UNICEF in India and four years as a freelance consultant. After joining IFPRI in 1999, he led a consortium on the double burden of malnutrition and a global initiative on agriculture and health research. In 2001, he co-founded the Regional Network on AIDS, Livelihoods and Food Security (RENEWAL) which fused locally-prioritized action research on AIDS, food and nutrition security with capacity strengthening and policy communications in a pioneering networking approach in Africa. Gillespie was director of the International Conference on HIV/AIDS, Food and Nutrition Security in South Africa in April 2005. In 2011 he led successful competitive tenders for two multi-partner research program consortia on undernutrition, funded by DFID – Transform Nutrition and Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA). From 2015-21, he led the Stories of Change project which identified drivers of success in nutrition in different countries, the SPEAR (Supporting Policies, Programs and Enabling Action through Research) flagship of the IFPRI-led Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH) program and the Transform Nutrition West Africa program. He has around 200 publications including 10 books, 14 monographs and 22 book chapters. His latest book 'Food Fight: From Plunder and Profit to People and Planet' will be published in April 2025 by Canongate.