International Advisory Group
"When it comes to TIDI, I think I can stress that networking and creating a platform where people can meet from different disciplines to try to understand development in this cross-cutting, multi-faceted way is incredibly important. I think TIDI is one of these platforms that you absolutely need to have both in Ireland and of course in other countries. It is an honour to be involved and engaged, so I appreciate that very much".
Prof. Finn Tarp, Director, UNU-WIDER, Finland
TIDI is delighted and honoured to have the following members as part of its International Advisory Group :
- Dr. Mary Robinson, President, Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice; Chancellor, University of Dublin
- Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, New York
- Dr. Olive Shisana, C.E.O., Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa
- Prof. Adrian Hill, Director, The Jenner Institute, Oxford University
- Mr. Tom Arnold, C.E.O., Concern Worldwide
- Prof. Finn Tarp, Director, UNU-WIDER, Finland
- Prof. Thandika Mkandawire, Chair in African Development, Development Studies Institute (DESTIN), London School of Economics and Political Science
- Prof. Tom Quinn, Director, Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health
- Prof. Nana Poku, Department of Peace Studies, University of Bradford
Dr. Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson serves as President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice (MRFCJ). She is the former President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative. She served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997 to 2002 and as President of Ireland from 1990-1997. She is a member of the Elders. She serves as Honorary President of Oxfam International, chair of the GAVI Alliance Board and President of the International Commission of Jurists. She is a former chair of the Council of Women World Leaders and a member of the Club of Madrid. The recipient of numerous honours and awards throughout the world including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, she serves on several boards including the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the Global Compact. She is a professor of practice at the University of Pretoria in South Africa and serves as Chancellor of Dublin University.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs
Jeffrey D. Sachs is the Director of The Earth Institute, Quetelet Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University. He is also Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. From 2002 to 2006, he was Director of the UN Millennium Project and Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals, the internationally agreed goals to reduce extreme poverty, disease, and hunger by the year 2015. Sachs is also President and Co-Founder of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at ending extreme global poverty. He is widely considered to be the leading international economic advisor of his generation. For more than 20 years Professor Sachs has been in the forefront of the challenges of economic development, poverty alleviation, and enlightened globalization, promoting policies to help all parts of the world to benefit from expanding economic opportunities and wellbeing. He is author of hundreds of scholarly articles and many books, including the New York Times bestsellers Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (Penguin, 2008) and The End of Poverty (Penguin, 2005).
Dr. Olive Shisana
Olive Shisana is a public health scientist who graduated with a Doctor of Science degree at Johns Hopkins University, Broomberg School of Public Health. Her main area of expertise is the epidemiology and risk factors of HIV and research on improving access to health care in a form of national health insurance. She chairs the South African Ministerial Advisory Committee on National Health Insurance. She is a member of the Economic Development Ministry think tank. Dr. Shisana is currently serving as CEO of the Human Sciences Research Council, the first woman to head it. Prior to this she served as Executive Director of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS and Health at the same organization. She served on many national and international scientific committees and advisory boards, such as the US Institute of Medicine’s Committee on Methodological Challenges in HIV Prevention Trials, the Global HIV Prevention Working Group, the Emory University Global Health Institute Advisory Board, the South African National AIDS Council and the Nelson Mandela’s 46664 campaign. She is a member of the Board of Emseni Resources and various Trusts.
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Prof. Adrian Hill
Adrian Hill trained at Trinity College Dublin and Oxford is now Professor of Human Genetics and Director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University. He leads research programmes in genetic susceptibility to tropical infectious diseases and in vaccine design and development. His group identified heterologous prime-boost immunisation using non-replicating vectors as an exceptionally potent approach for inducing protective T cell responses in murine malaria and undertook the first clinical trials of this vaccination strategy. In 2005 he was appointed Director of the Jenner Institute, a new initiative aimed at accelerating public sector vaccine development for a variety of human and livestock infectious diseases. The Institute aims to fill the gap between pre-clinical vaccine design and large-scale field efficacy trials particularly for infections that pose great disease burdens in developing countries. Over fifty clinical trials have been undertaken in recent years by Jenner Investigators who are developing new vaccines against malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, meningitis, pandemic influenza and hepatitis. He currently also chairs the Centre for Clinical Vaccinology and Tropical Medicine and the Clinical Biomanufacturing Facility in Oxford. He has published over 350 research papers. He is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal College of Physicians and a NIHR Senior Investigator.
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Mr. Tom Arnold
Tom Arnold has been CEO of Concern Worldwide since 2001. He was previously Assistant Secretary General and Chief Economist in the Department of Agriculture and Food in Ireland. He worked in the European Commission for 10 years, three of which were in Africa. He served on the UN Millennium Projects Hunger Task Force (2003-05), was a member of the Irish Hunger Task Force (2007-08) and the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund’s (CERF) Advisory Group (2006-09). He was Chairman of the European Food Security Group (EFSG) a network of 40 European NGOs engaged in food security work (2005-10). Mr Arnold is one of two members from Europe on a 9 member board of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). He is a member of the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) and is Vice-Chair of the Trans Atlantic Food Aid Dialogue (TAFAD) an alliance of American, European and Canadian NGOs working on the reform of international food aid. He is also a member of the Trust governing the Irish Times, Ireland’s leading newspaper. Tom Arnold is a graduate in Agricultural Economics from University College Dublin and has Masters Degrees from the Catholic University of Louvain and Trinity College Dublin.
Prof. Finn Tarp
Professor Finn Tarp is the Director of UNU-WIDER, Helsinki, Finland. He also holds the Chair of Professor of Development Economics at the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen, where he completed his MSc and PhD in Economics. Professor Tarp has some 30 years of experience in academic and applied development economics research and teaching. His field experience covers numerous countries across Africa and the developing world more generally, including longer term assignments in Swaziland (two years), Mozambique (eight years) and Vietnam (three years). He is a leading international expert on issues of development strategy and foreign aid, with an interest in poverty, income distribution and growth, micro- and macroeconomic policy and modeling, agricultural sector policy and planning, household and enterprise development, and economic adjustment and reform. In addition to his university positions, Finn Tarp has held senior posts and advisory positions within government and with donor organizations, and he is member of a large number of international committees and advisory bodies. They include the European Union Development Network (EUDN) and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC).
Prof. Thandika Mkandawire
Professor Thandika Mkandawire is Professor of African Development at the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics. He is former Director of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development and the first person to take on the new position of Chair in African Development at the London School of Economics (LSE). Prof. Mkandawire was formerly Director of the Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen and has taught at the Universities of Stockholm and Zimbabwe.
Prof. Tom Quinn
Dr. Tom Quinn is Senior Investigator and Head of the Section on International HIV/AIDS Research in the Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is also the Associate Director for International Research for the Division of Intramural Research at NIAID. In addition, he is Professor of Medicine and Pathology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Professor in the Departments of International Health, Epidemiology, and Immunology and Molecular Microbiology in The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. He is the founding Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Global Health. Dr. Quinn has been involved in HIV clinical and epidemiologic investigations in 25 countries, with current projects in Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Ethiopia, India, China, Thailand, and Brazil. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the U.S. National Academy of Science and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is an author of over 800 research publications on HIV and other infectious diseases.
Prof. Nana Poku
Nana K. Poku is the John Ferguson Professor of African Studies at the University of Bradford. He joined the University's Peace Studies Department in 2006 from the United Nations where he held the posts of Senior Policy Advisor to the Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and also Director of Research for the United Nation's Secretary General's Commission on HIV/AIDS and Governance in Africa (UN-CHGA). He currently serves as a Special Advisor to the Government of Ghana on PRSP and Health issues and has led 14 appraisal mission in 11 countries in Africa. He has also been an advisor to the European Union, the World Bank, the OECD, the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Development Program, among other international agencies. Before joining the United Nations, Professor Poku taught and researched on the impact of HIV/AIDS and Human Security issues in Africa at Southampton University, UK.