WashingtonCircle

Confirmed Speakers

• Ruth Meinzen-DIck
  Ruth Meinzen-Dick is a development sociologist who looks for ways to reduce poverty in developing countries. She grew up in India, where she developed an appreciation for the importance of water resources, and has spent many years studying how people manage water and other natural resources, with field work in India, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Kenya. She is a senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), leads the CGIAR Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi), an interdisciplinary program that involves over 500 organizations worldwide, and is President of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). Her research on resource management and the impact assessment of agricultural programs has demonstrated the importance of involving women as well as men to reduce poverty. She has over 100 peer reviewed publications, including Innovation in natural resource management: The role of property rights and collective action in developing countries.
• Agnes Quisumbing
  Agnes R. Quisumbing is an economist who is interested in the factors that enable individuals, households and communities to move out of poverty over the long term, and specifically, the role that men’s and women’s assets play in this process. This interest in long-term change has led her to study households in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Guatemala, and her native Philippines over periods of 10-30 years. A citizen of the Philippines, Quisumbing joined IFPRI in 1995. Before joining IFPRI, Quisumbing worked at the University of the Philippines, Diliman and Los Baños; the World Bank; Yale University; and the International Rice Research Institute.
• Jemimah Njuki
  Jemimah Njuki is a young scientist working on women in agriculture issues in Africa. She has a PhD in Development studies from the Sokoine University of Agriculture in Tanzania and has been working on gender issues in Africa for the last 10 years. Between 2003 and 2008, she worked on a programme called Enabling Rural Innovation, working with smallholder women farmers in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Kenya to improve food security, increase their access to markets and achieve gender equality. She is currently leading a team working on gender and poverty issues at the International livestock Research Institute, based in Nairobi Kenya. She is mentoring young women scientists to work with African women farmers.