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International Advisory Committee

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.
Prof. Finn Tarp, Director, UNU-WIDER, Finland

Committee Members

TIDI is delighted and honoured to have the following members as part of its International Advisory Group: 

H.E Dr. Mary Robinson

Former President of the Republic of Ireland

Mary Robinson serves as President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice (MRFCJ). 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, serves as Honorary President of Oxfam International, Chair of the GAVI Alliance Board and President of the International Commission of Jurists. She is the former President of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative and a former Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders.

A recipient of numerous honours and award 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 Columbia University and Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria. She also serves as Chancellor of Dublin University.  

Prof Jeffrey D. Sachs

Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University

Jeffrey D. Sachs is a Professor of Economics at Columbia University and serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is Special Advisor to United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on the Sustainable Development Goals, and previously advised UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on both the Sustainable Development Goals and Millennium Development Goals and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals. Sachs is currently Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network under the auspices of UN Secretary-General António Guterres, and a Commissioner of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Development. Sachs is also co-founder and Chief Strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, and was director of the Millennium Villages Project (2005-2015).

For more than 20 years, Prof. Sachs has been in the forefront of addressing 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 well-being. He is author of hundreds of scholarly articles, many books, and syndicated columnist whose monthly newspaper columns appear in more than 100 countries. 

Dr Olive Shisana

Public Health Scientist

Dr Shisana is a public health scientist and a social epidemiologist who conducts national research studies aimed at evidenced-based health policy and program development. She is a world-renowned expert in HIV, having published more than 100 journal articles, book chapters and monographs. She is an honorary Professor at the University of Cape Town, Psychiatry & Mental Health Department. 


Dr Shisana served as the first Director General for the Department of Health in South Africa under the Mandela Administration, where she led the development of transformative policies and strategies for health service provision. She also served as Executive Director (number 2 level) at the World Health Organization, directing programs for child health, HIV/AIDS, reproductive health and women’s health.  She served as CEO of South Africa’s Human Sciences Research Council for 10 years, the first woman to do so.  Prior to that, she was the founder and the first Executive Director of Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS as well as the founder of the Social Aspects of HIV/AIDS Research Alliance (SAHARA).

Prof Adrian Hill

Director of the Jenner Institute at Oxford University

Professor Hill trained at Trinity College Dublin and 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. He is a passionate believer in the power of molecular medicine to design and deliver new health care interventions that will improve the lives of the poorest billion in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. His own vaccine research programme has developed one of the most promising potential vaccines for malaria which is currently in large scale trials in infants in sub-Saharan Africa. In 2014 his group led the first clinical trial of an Ebola virus vaccine targeting the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. He has published over 350 research papers.

Mr Tom Arnold

Director General of IIEA, former CEO of Concern Worldwide

Tom Arnold is an Agricultural Economist and served as CEO of Concern Worldwide for 11 years. He was previously Assistant Secretary General and Chief Economist in the Department of Agriculture and Food in Ireland. He served on the Millennium Projects Hunger Task Force (2003-05), was a member of the Irish Hunger Task Force (2007-08) and the UN’s Central Emergency Respond Fund’s (CERF) Advisory Group (2006-09). Mr Arnold is one of two members from Europe on a 9 member board of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR). 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 of Development Economics and Former Director, UNU-WIDER

Prof. Tarp is a Professor of Development Economics at the University of Copenhagen and former Director of United Nations University (UNU-WIDER) where he remains a Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow. 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 as well as climate change, sustainability and natural resources. He has published widely in internationally refereed academic journals plus a large number of research reports and other studies and publications.

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). From 2013 - 2016 he also served as a member of the World Bank Chief Economist’s 15 member ‘Council of Eminent Persons’ advising the Chief Economist.

Prof Thandika Mkandawire

Professor of African Development, London School of Economics

Prof. Thandika Mkandawire is Professor of African Development at the Department of International Development at the London School of Economics. He is a 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. Prof. Mkandawire was formerly Director of the Council for the Development of Social Science on Africa (CODESRIA), a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Development Research in Copenhagen and has taught at the Universities of Zimbabwe and of Stockholm where he currently holds the Olof Palme Professor for Peace with the Institute for Future Studies in Stockholm.

In recognition of his ‘excellent record in scholarship and research in the area of development studies’, The University of York, Canada conferred upon Prof. Mkandawire an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree in October 2018.

Prof Tom Quinn

Professor of Medicine and Pathology at Johns Hopkins

Dr. Thomas Quinn is professor of medicine and pathology in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and professor of international health, epidemiology, and molecular microbiology and immunology in The Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and professor of nursing in the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. He currently directs the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine P3 HIV/AIDS Research Facility and the International STD Research Laboratory.

He serves as advisor/consultant on HIV and STDs to the World Health Organization, Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (PEPFAR), UNAIDS, and the FDA. He also serves as Associate Director for International Research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Dr. Quinn has been involved in clinical, virological and epidemiologic investigations of HIV/AIDS in 29 countries and was one of the first scientists to identify the AIDS epidemic and its cause HIV, in Africa in the early phases of the global pandemic. He is an author of over 900 publications on HIV, STDs, and infectious diseases, and serves on multiple editorial boards.