Adrian Ely

Biography

Adrian Ely is currently Professor of Technology and Sustainability and Director in Policy Training & Executive Education at SPRU. His career has investigated the links between science, technology and sustainability. He has researched these questions in various sectors, working at international levels and with colleagues in numerous countries across the world (see Research and Scholarship). He originally trained in the natural sciences before working in biodiversity conservation and international development in the 1990s. He has been at Sussex since 2000, when he started in the School of Life Sciences as a postgraduate student. His doctoral project at SPRU on the comparative regulation of transgenic crops (2001–2006) led to research fellowships within the European Commission FP6-funded integrated project "Safe Foods" (which focused on European food safety governance) and subsequently within the STEPS Centre. Between 2006 and 2021, he worked as a member of the STEPS Centre (a collaboration between SPRU and IDS). He was Deputy Director and Head of Impact and Engagement (2011–2016), and co-led (2015–2021) the 'Transformative Pathways to Sustainability' network as part of the Centre's global consortium. The international scope of his work has involved periods as a visiting researcher in France, Austria, the USA, Kenya, India and Argentina. He has a particular interest in China and has been a student of the country's science and technology policies since 2007. He has been a co-investigator on the CHNUK project (China-UK Integrated Platforms from Science to Policy in Response to Antibacterial Resistance), a co-investigator on the project 'Low Carbon Innovation in China', a member of the Centre for Bionetworking and a member of the Steering Committee of the Sussex Asia Centre.