J.w.m. Hanneke Lam

Biography

Hanneke Lam joined the Natural Resources Institute (NRI) at the University of Greenwich in November 2010. She is involved with research and consultancy projects related to socio-economic and institutional aspects of rural development, mainly in developing countries. Her recent projects focused on the inclusion of smallholder farmers in local, regional and international markets through, for example: risk management linked to improved access to financial services; enhanced market institutions; a conducive policy environment; inclusive value chains; business management; and improved coordination between the public and private sector as well as civil society. Hanneke holds an MSc in Development Economics and BSc in Economics of Rural Development from Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) in the Netherlands, the world's second leading university in agriculture. She has overseas experience in Malawi, Namibia, Kenya, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, and Nigeria.

Research Interest

Hanneke enjoys research projects which are not only interesting from an academic perspective, but which also have a real life impact in terms of improving livelihoods for smallholder farmers and contributing to a thriving agricultural sector. One of the projects she is currently involved in, promotes tools and methods to enable farmers to manage farm risks, and looks at the conditions in which these tools are best applied. For example, warehouse receipt systems and collateral management can improve the ability for farmers to access to financial services and output markets through collective marketing, but policy constraints will need to be addressed simultaneously.