Philip Thornton

Philip Thornton has nearly forty years’ experience as a researcher and research leader in agricultural research for development organisations. He gained a BSc (Hons) at the Universisty of Reading in agricultural systems in 1979 and a PhD in farm management at Lincoln College, New Zealand, in 1984. His work has been mostly in the fields of farming systems research, crop and livestock modelling, agricultural economics, ex ante and ex post impact assessment, and priority setting. Project work has taken him to many countries all over the world. He has been affiliated with CGIAR for much of his career, and from 2010 to 2021 he led work on policy and priority setting work for the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).  He has contributed to several global assessments of agriculture, adaptation, food systems and climate change, including most recently the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report. He is an Honorary Professor in the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, an Emeritus Fellow at the International Livestock Researcg Institute (ILRI), Nairobi, Kenya, and a Research & Innovation Strategist with Clim-Eat, an organisaton working to accelerate climate action in food systems. In 2023 he became a member of the Board of Trustees of GALVmed, a public-private partnership committed to increasing small-scale producers’ access to animal health products in lower-income countries in Africa and South Asia. He is based in Edinburgh, Scotland.