Stephen D. Biggs, who has recently died, was at IDS from 1969 to 1973 and was part of a group who went on to make long-lasting and pioneering contributions to rural development and wider development policy and action. Below is an appreciation of his academic life from colleagues who knew him well.
There have been many tributes to Stephen since he died earlier this month. For us, it was a joy to be in his company—the line between the professional and the personal association blurred.
Stephen graduated in agricultural economics from Wye College, University of London, followed by MSc studies at Illinois and his PhD at UC Berkeley, completed by developing an input-output model to understand the green revolution transformations in agriculture in the Kosi River Area, in the Districts of Purnea and Saharsa in NE Bihar, India.
These studies defined Stephen as an agricultural economist, but he was so much more. The dissertation part of his PhD was pursued at IDS, where in 1969 he joined an informal group of nine social scientists developing their research in the same districts, including Edward Clay, Geof Wood, and Gerry and Janine Rodgers. From the outset, Stephen was determined that his research should inform policy.
His fieldwork was assisted by Charlotte Burns. In IDS and in Purnea District of the Kosi Development Area (KDA), Stephen met and formed long term relationships with UK colleagues and with local officials (and their families), especially S.D. Prasad, then KDA Commissioner. And he listened well to the farming communities. From the outset, he was focussed on understanding a system, not just individuals, then a departure from household and farm focussed methods of economic investigation.
Being just senior to most of us, he was a mentor: sharing, encouraging and broadening our perspectives. Gerry and Janine recall the way he connected his detailed work with broader development goals, and the desire to improve people’s lives. Edward remembers being introduced to more applied and inductive approaches for his own PhD.
Geof is forever grateful for teaching him the basics of North Bihar agriculture before he embarrassed himself in ‘his’ village. All of us recognise that Stephen as a colleague, mentor and teacher, then and throughout his career, embodied such a modest demeanour. He exemplified knowledge as common property not private. That is how he lived his professional career.
Back in IDS in 1973, writing up and teaching, Stephen excited an MA student, Simon Maxwell, to be an engaged researcher, to be policy driven. Simon remembers that Steve ‘marked my dissertation down because it didn’t say enough about policy. The generations of students and colleagues who, over the years, have heard me saying that the key question is ‘What do we do on Monday morning?’ have Steve to thank’.
Stephen soon left Brighton for the Ford Foundation in Dhaka, as a programme officer in a small team led by George Zeidenstein, with Lincoln Chen as a colleague. The three of them enabled the FF to punch above its weight in terms of policy influence, supported by analysis.
Stephen was instrumental in bringing Edward to the A/D/C there, and with Sally, his first wife, supported Geof and his wife Angela in Cumilla. Lincoln recalls Stephen’s empathy for the poor, always putting their interest first. Sattar Mandal, later VC at the Bangladesh Agriculture University, was enabled by Stephen and Edward to do his PhD at Wye, and recalls ‘Stephen had an inquisitive mind to understand why some technologies work, while some don’t.’ The significance of those four years in Bangladesh is perhaps best summed up this way: ‘One international organisation always came up with unhesitating support whenever I asked for help, ever since my days at Chittagong University. This was the Ford Foundation: Lincoln Chen and Stephen Biggs had each come up with flexible ways of assisting our work.’ This recollection comes from Md. Yunus, founder of the Grameen Bank, Nobel Prize Laureate and presently Chief Advisor of the Interim Government in Bangladesh. Not many of us have acquired that kind of accolade!
In 1977, Stephen and Sally went on to CIMMYT in New Delhi for three years, with Korina, their young daughter. Stephen was also learning about Nepal. The family moved to Norwich in 1980, where Stephen joining the faculty at UEA, and continuing after retirement in 2003 as Research Fellow until 2013. There he had a strong teaching and writing collaboration with Frank Ellis, who remembers Stephen as an energetic and highly motivating teacher, taking students into rural Norfolk to see real farming, a revelation especially to overseas students. UEA, especially with Frank, had a strong interdisciplinary brand, so Stephen fitted right in.
In the late 1990s, Stephen, after the early death of his second wife Venetia, began his close involvement of over 20 years with Nepal, being in Kathmandu for lengthy stays and travelling widely in both the Hills and across the Terai. There he combined personal contentment among new friends with his ongoing professional gratification: small machines! He was too sensible to see hand-held power tillers and mobile pump sets as the magic bullet, but he did become almost evangelical. As he carried on writing from this era of applied research, notably with Scott Justice and also again Sattar Mandal, so the small machine mission became stronger. Barbara Harriss-White, recalling SOAS Agrarian Change seminars, notes his steadfastness in showing how small machinery can transform agriculture. He was awakening South Asian policy makers to how small-scale farming and informal economies worked, and thus he connected to the strategic debates about whether the small family farm had a future. Scott sums up this part of Stephen’s life with: ‘small engines always put a smile on his face’.
But of course Stephen was more than a university teacher and researcher; he was a wonderful gardener, a regular and great jive dancer, passionate about a capella singing and would play his flute without inhibition for extremely ill friends and family even in nursing homes.
To conclude this appreciation, Stephen was a great interlocutor, his continuing strength being inductive rather than narrowly deductive. He was inter-disciplinary almost before the term existed. He has been a fine academic, the best sort. Open and generous with his ideas and insights, keen to apply knowledge to the real world of struggling, insecure, farmers on the relentless edge of disaster, and keen to see the social benefits of productivity enhancing technology for the little guy. He had no time for the wiles and dark arts of the institutionalised academy. He just wanted to help poor people. We will miss his presence among us.
Edward Clay and Geof Wood with Lincoln Chen, Frank Ellis, Barbara Harriss-White, Scott Justice, Abdus Sattar Mandal, Simon Maxwell and Gerry and Janine Rodgers
Brighton and Bath, February 2025
