Biography
Nazia Mintz-Habib is a fellow of the Isaac Newton Trust and the Cambridge Malaysian Commonwealth Studies Center (MCSC) at University of Cambridge. She held a Giorgio Ruffolo Research Fellowship in the Sustainability Science Program at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. She is also involved with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) studying the global value chain of genetically modified cotton and its impacts on poverty and food security in Africa.
For the past five years Nazia has worked for international development organizations such as the UNDP, FAO, IFPRI and USAID in varying capacities. She has worked as a team leader and academic adviser to several research projects in different sectors including but not limited to food security, renewable energy, poverty, MDGs and climate change.
Nazia Mintz-Habib is interested in identifying pathways to improve the global value chain of agricultural commodities to ensure food security. She has studied the political economy of food security and global value chains for the past decade. To better understand food security, Nazia looks at the comparative development of agribusinesses and global commodity value chain expansions in developing economies. She studied cases in Bangladesh, Nicaragua, Malaysia, Tanzania and India. Lately, Nazia is keen to understand institutional system change in the agricultural sector as influenced by new commodities like biofuels and technologies like agrobiotechnology. She is currently authoring a book on biofuels and food security.
