Professor Jeremy Lind is a development geographer of the Horn of Africa, focussing on conflict, violence, livelihoods and social protection, particularly in pastoralist areas. He was co-leader of the Resource Politics and Environmental Change cluster at IDS from 2015-2018.
Jeremy has over 25 years of academic research, advisory work and project management experience, working with a range of government and non-governmental actors at the national and sub-national levels in the Horn of Africa as well as scholars and advocates in the region. Currently he is part of the leadership team for the Better Assistance in Crises (BASIC) Research programme funded by the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office. He is also leading a qualitative-participatory research team undertaking NERC-funded research in Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania on nature-based solutions to enhance climate resilience.
His recent research critically examined the local-level dynamics around land and resource-based investments in dryland eastern Africa. This was undertaken in his role as PI of the UK Research Councils-funded Seeing Conflict at the Margins project, which used interdisciplinary methods to examine conflicts around geothermal and wind power developments in Kenya. He was also editor of Land, Investment and Politics: Reconfiguring Eastern Africa’s Pastoral Drylands (James Currey, 2020).
Previously, he convened the Addressing and Mitigating Violence programme as part of the IDS DFID Accountable Grant, leading to the publication of a collection of cases on vernacular security at the insurgent margins.
Jeremy’s advisory experience focusses on livelihoods and social protection, including leading the qualitative research (2012-2021) for the Donor Coordination Team-commissioned performance evaluation of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP). He has completed other advisory work for the World Bank, Irish Aid, WFP, Oxfam GB, Christian Aid, Medicines Sans Frontieres-UK, and the BBC World Service.
Currently, Jeremy is a Staff Trustee to the IDS Board of Trustees (2025-2028).
Teaching
Jeremy convenes and lectures across a range of MA modules including Debating Poverty and Vulnerability, Poverty Violence and Conflict, and Climate Change and Development.
PhD Supervision
Jeremy was supervisor of several PhD students who successfully completed their dissertation research under the Pastoralism, Uncertainty and Resilience (PASTRES) research programme funded by the European Research Council.
Currently, he supervises the following PhD students:
Charley Howman: Survive, thrive or be left behind? Exploring the role(s) of community-led support in urban protracted displacement: the case of displaced Syrians in Tripoli, Lebanon
Aysha Valery: Navigating Formalisation: Gender and Governance of Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining Livelihoods in the Congolese Copperbelt
Kelly Lyn David: The Future of Humanitarianism: Devolution or Evolution
For PhD applicants, Jeremy welcomes proposals on the following topics:
- Research into the nexus of social protection and humanitarian assistance in protracted crises as well as more stable settings
- Research into livelihood dynamics and trends, vulnerability and poverty in conflict-affected settings
- Research on pastoralism and development
