Christophe Béné is a Research Fellow in the Vulnerability and Poverty Reduction team at the Institute of Development Studies. He is a socio-economist and policy analyst with more than 15 years of experience in developing countries. Through inter-disciplinary research his work focuses on poverty and vulnerability issues, initially through analysis of the socio-political economy of natural resources in rural areas; more recently through involvement in social protection programmes in relation to disasters and climate change.

Before joining IDS, he worked 3 years as Research Fellow in the Center for Economic and Management of Aquatic Resources at the University of Portsmouth (UK) and then 7 years as Scientist and then Senior Advisor for the WorldFish Center -one of the 15 centers of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). He has a PhD from the University of Paris, a post-graduate Diploma in Development Economics from the School of Development Studies at the University of East Anglia (UK), and a Master and a BSc degree both in Marine Environmental Sciences, from the
University of Marseille (France).

He has published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles in international journals, and several book chapters. Through his professional career, he worked in more than 20 countries in the Caribbean, South and South-East Asia, Sub-Sahara Africa, and the Pacific region.