Visiting Professors
Michael Dower has been a regular face in the Institute since 1996, taking semi-retirement in 2002. He continues to work with the CCRI, in particular in relation to international rural development, and contributes to the Institute's MSc course in European Rural Development. He is currently active in three major European initiatives - the PREPARE partnership for Rural Europe; CURE - the convention for a sustainable urban and Rural Europe; and the database of initiatives in practical sustainability in rural Europe, being prepared by the network Forum Synergies with funding from the Fondation pour le Progres de l'Homme.
David Gibbon has a background as an agriculturalist but worked for many years in rural development based at the University of East Anglia (Development Studies). Now based in Shropshire, David has worked in many countries in Africa and Asia on small farm systems research and development. He has an interest in all aspects of sustainable agriculture and rural livelihoods and in community participation, social learning and action to manage landscapes and futures. David has participated in a number of recent research activities with CCRI colleagues, including the project entitled 'evaluation of key factors that lead to successful agri-environment co-operative schemes'.
Previous CCRI Director Bill Slee has retained a Visiting Professorship at the CCRI since his departure in September 2006 to head up the Socio-Economics Research Group at the Macaulay Institute in Aberdeen. Bill’s recent work has reflected the Macaulay Institute’s strong interest in interdisciplinary science and its role in addressing pressing challenges such as climate change and natural resource management conflicts. He is a partner in the recently won EU FP7 project REFRESH on climate change impacts on water systems in Europe and active on a Scottish Government project on the economic impact of rural land use on sustainable economic growth. The report of the Committee Royal Society of Edinburgh on the future of the Hills and Islands, on which Bill was a member, has influenced government thinking in Scotland and informed the Commission for Rural Communities work in their Uplands Inquiry, which Bill has supported with two presentations.
Ken Thomson is Professor Emeritus at the University of Aberdeen, and has been assisting Janet Dwyer on the RuDI and CAPRI-RD projects, on EU rural development policy impacts and a modelling literature review, respectively. During 2008/09, he also worked on the now-completed TERA (territorial aspects of enterprise development in remote rural areas) EU project, and acted as a final report reviewer for the TERA-SIAP (building a typology of European rural areas for the spatial impact assessment of policies) project, alongside journal reviews, postgraduate supervision and examination activities.
