Dr Natasha Grist

Natasha’s research and applied technical background is in sustainable agriculture and climate change.

She is a Core Team member of the new Norwich Institute for Sustainable Development, a joint partnership of the John Innes Centre with other institutes of the Norwich Research Park focussing on global food security. Natasha is supporting the NISD to develop new funded streams of research in areas of agriculture, climate change, nutrition and diet.

She completed her PhD at UEA in 2005 smallholder agriculture at the colonist frontier in the Amazon, and a post-doc at the Tyndall Centre on policy makers decision-making processes with future scenarios of climate change.

She has since spent ten years leading technical advisory research and analysis of adaptation and mitigation initiatives and programmes with smallholder farmers in Africa, set up a £13m related research fund, and has international experience in many countries in East and West Africa, and Brazil and Nepal.

Now back at UEA, Natasha will be renewing her academic research interests in the areas of pro-poor transformative changes in food security, agriculture and nutrition, and the related processes of policy making and influencing change, and is looking forward to collaborations with John Innes Centre researchers on these topics.