Alex Duncan. After studying at the universities of Oxford and Reading, Alex Duncan has worked as a development practitioner, researcher, programme manager, and consultant in many countries of Africa, Asia and Europe, and at strategic level for several development agencies. His interests include agricultural and rural policy, and more recently the political economy of development. He was employed as an agricultural economist by the World Bank and FAO in Sudan and Lesotho from 1975 to 1980, where he was responsible for setting up and managing agricultural policy and planning units. He then worked as a freelance researcher and consultant during the 1980s, and was a research associate of Queen Elizabeth House, University of Oxford. From 1989 to 2003 he worked with the Food Studies Group and its successor, Oxford Policy Management Ltd. He is currently a Senior Associate Member, St.Antony’s College Oxford and Visiting Professor at Imperial College, London. He is currently providing support to the newly-established ‘Drivers of Change’ team within the Policy Division of the UK government’s Department for International Development.

Gareth Williams is an independent consultant working for DFID, the European Commission and other international organisations. He has a keen interest and broad range of experience on agricultural development issues, both in the field and at the policy level. Recently he has helped organise the European Forum for Rural Development Cooperation in Montpellier (2002) and moderated the DFID Hunger and Poverty E-Forum (2001). He has assisted the European Commission with the drafting of policy papers on agriculture and rural development. He has also conducted reviews for DFID on PRSPs from a food security perspective, and is currently working on studies of the impact of EU trade preference erosion on sugar and banana producers. Previously Gareth worked for the European Commission managing agriculture and rural development projects in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.