Jon Hellin

Bio

With a PhD in Geography, an MSc in Forestry, and a BA in Modern History, Jon's interdisciplinary background has informed his holistic approach to agricultural research-for-development (AR4D). He has thirty years’ interdisciplinary research experience on climate change adaptation, mitigation, and transformation; soil and water conservation; and agricultural innovation systems from Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

Jon has fifteen years’ experience of fostering interdisciplinary research teams and building transdisciplinary networks with policy-makers, non-governmental organizations, public and private sectors, advanced research institutes, and multilateral organizations.

Since June 2018, he has led research on Sustainable Impact at the IRRI. As a senior manager at IRRI, he promotes the internal organizational changes required to incentivize scientists to work in more holistic and interdisciplinary ways. These include interactive seminars; interdisciplinary publications; providing ‘safe spaces’ for exploring different development discourses; and defining better scientists’ roles and modus operandi in theories of change.

He is also involved in fostering transdisciplinary networks in response to climate change challenges. Examples include i) sea level rise and Asian mega-deltas, and ii) crop management and land use to reduce the impact of crop residue burning in the Indo-Gangetic Plains (IGP) in northern India.