Shenggen Fan

Dr Shenggan Fan is the director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute, backed by the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an alliance of 64 governments, private foundations, and international and regional organisations.

Before joining IFPRI, he held positions at the International Service for National Agricultural Research in the Netherlands and the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology at the University of Arkansas.

Shenggen received his Ph.D. in applied economics from the University of Minnesota and his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Nanjing Agricultural University in China.

Shenggen has served on the editorial boards of various academic journals and is currently an Executive Committee member of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. He has also received many awards, including the Distinguished Professional Contribution Award from the Southern Agricultural Economics Association and the Outstanding Alumni Award in Applied Economics from the University of Minnesota.

After completing his Ph.D., he was (1990–1992) Post-doctoral fellow and associate research officer at the International Service for National Agricultural Research (ISNAR) in The Hague, the Netherlands, and then Research Economist at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
He has been on the editorial boards of Food Policy (UK), 2002–Present, Journal of Chinese Rural Economy, China, 2001–Present, and Review of Agricultural Economics, USA, 2001-2002.

Since 2004, Fan is also an adjunct fellow of the Institute of Indian Dalit Studies, New Delhi which was established in 2003 as a non-profit autonomous institute to undertake research and promote informed debate on the issues of social exclusion, discrimination, their consequences, policies against social exclusion and collective actions by civil society organisations and others, and inclusive polices. IIDS is amongst the first research organisations in India that focuses specifically on the development concerns of marginalised and socially excluded groups who suffered from social exclusion due to their group identity associated with their social origin like caste, ethnicity, gender, religion, colour, physical handicap, regional identity and other forms of social identities. These groups include former untouchables or Dalits, Tribes, Religious Minorities like Muslim and Christian, Women (particularly belonging to excluded groups), Nomadic and de-Notified Tribes and other.