The aim
An Honorary Fellowship is a prestigious award that WorldFish bestows on prominent international science leaders with the aim of connecting them to the core of WorldFish’s research, research staff and national partners.
Through this fellowship, a WorldFish Honorary Fellow will contribute to WorldFish’s mission to strengthen livelihoods and enhance food and nutrition security by improving fisheries and aquaculture globally.
The criteria
An Honorary Fellow will be a person recognized as having made an outstanding contribution to their chosen field; a field that will be directly relevant to WorldFish mission and research impacts. The Fellow will have outstanding academic qualifications, substantial research publications and a proven commitment to research embedded in and contributing to development.
The expectation
During the fellowship period, an Honorary Fellow is expected to contribute to the production of high impact paper and reports to make our work more accessible to influential actors, responsive to development needs and impactful in terms of research and development outcomes. The Fellow will also provide thought leadership to the senior executive, contribute to WorldFish’s research direction and impact pathways, function as a mentor to WorldFish’s research leadership and act as an ambassador for WorldFish.
The appointment
The Director General will make direct appointments following consultation with WorldFish’s research leadership and the Executive Team for a period of up to 3 years.
John Kurien has a background in statistics, business management and a Ph.D in social sciences. After a short stint in industry, he lived and worked in a small fishing village in Kerala State, India to help small-scale fishers to organize their cooperative. This work spread with the help of those trained from the villages. He then moved to the Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum, India but continued to be an activist-researcher. He organized the first International Conference of Fishworkers and their Supporters in Rome in 1984, parallel to the UN/FAO World Conference on Fisheries. He was a founder member of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (www.icsf.net). From 1997 to 2006 he served as Vice-Chairperson of the UN/FAO Advisory Committee on Fisheries Research (ACFR). From 2005 he worked in Cambodia with inland fishing communities and the government to assist their Community Fisheries program. Between 2007 and 2010 he was UN/FAO Fisheries Co-Management Advisor in post-tsunami Aceh Province, Indonesia. He retired as Professor from the Centre for Development Studies and is now Visiting Professor at the Azim Premji University, Bangalore, India, where he offers a course on Coastal Zone Livelihoods and Sustainable Management for MA (Development) students. He continues his involvement with Community Fisheries initiatives in Cambodia and more recently in Myanmar. His interests include natural resources management, issues in common property resource management, collective action and rural organisations and development issues with special reference to aquatic eco-systems and fishing communities. His informal association with World Fish goes back to the late 1970s. His publications can be accessed at www.researchgate.net.
Dr. Ben Belton appointed Global Lead for Social and Economic Inclusion is an interdisciplinary social scientist and leading researcher on the political economy and political ecology of aquatic food systems in South and Southeast Asia. He shares a joint appointment with Michigan State University as Associate Professor of International Development. His work focusses on the links between value chains and food systems, rural development and agrarian change, food and nutrition security, social well-being, and the environment.
A UK native, Belton is currently leading critical research on the impacts and responses of COVID-19 disruptions to aquatic food systems in Africa, Asia and globally and contributing to the work of the One CGIAR COVID-19 Hub.
