Professor Anne Tallontire
- Position: Professor of Sustainability and Business
- Areas of expertise: corporate social responsibility with respect to development, particularly on ethical and fair trade and the use of private standards.
- Email: A.M.Tallontire@leeds.ac.uk
- Phone: +44(0)113 343 6469
- Location: 8.104 School of Earth and Environment
- Website: Twitter | LinkedIn | Googlescholar | Researchgate
Profile
I am an inter-disciplinary social scientist with over twenty years of experience. My background is in economics, politics and development studies and have undertaken research in various parts of Africa, including Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, Sudan and South Africa. Much of my research focuses on the way in which the private sector, including through corporate social responsibility, affects development. I look at this in two different ways: through a focus on supply chain relationships and also sustainability standards, such as fair trade. I am also interested in the nature of partnership in multi-stakeholder and cross-sector contexts.
I joined the University as a lecturer in 2007 and was made a Senior Lecturer in Business, Environment and Corporate Responsibility in 2010 and then Professor of Sustainability and Business in May 2019. Prior to joining the University of Leeds I was a Research Fellow at the Natural Resources Institute at the University of Greenwich where I managed the Natural Resources and Ethical Trade programme, established in 1997 as the first body focused on the promotion and investigation of social and environmental dimensions in trade from the perspective of developing countries and poor people. I began working in this field in the mid 1990s, by studying for a PhD at the University of Bradford on fair trade on coffee, focusing on the relatioship between European fair trade organisations and a coffee co-operative in Tanzania.
Responsibilities
- Pro Dean for Student Education
Research interests
In my research I have considered who benefits in the supply chain, whose voice is heard in the governance of the supply chain, and the standards that are used to promote sustainability. My experience has largely been I the agri-food sector where I focus on the impacts and perspectives of those at the producer end of the chain. I have undertaken research and consultancy projects for a variety of national and international clients, including UK Department for International Development, Department for Food and Rural Affairs, Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International, Foreign Investment Advisory Service of the World Bank, Ethical Trading Initiative, United Nations Common Fund for Commodities, Food and Agriculture Organization, Hivos.
I am a member of the Fair Trade International Symposium (FTIS) Steering Group, the leading international group of academics and practitioners working on fair trade, and led sessions at the last FTIS which took place in Portsmouth 26-28 June 2018, and an online event in June 2020. I am a member of the Development Studies Association (formerly leading their Business and Development Study Group).
Current projects:
Farmers' perspectives on challenges in the food system: a collaborative research partnership, funded by the AHRC, to December 2021. See this profile
Recent research
N8 Agri-food Strategic Pump Priming project “Differentiated resilience in global food systems: a food sovereignty approach”. PI working with Elisa Greco and colleagues across SRI and the Uni as well as York, Lancaster and Newcastle. To March 2018.
Co-Investigatator for BURNS - Building Up Resilience in Supply Chains, a White Rose Colloborative Project.http://www.whiterose.ac.uk/collaborationfunds/building-up-resilience-in-supply-chains-network-burns/ including the following working paper:
Anne Tallontire, Bob Doherty, Chee Yew Wong, William Young, Mike Tse, Severine Saintier, Zoe Ollerenshaw, Mina Said-Allsopp, Corrado Topi, David Oglethorpe (2015) Building up resilience in agricultural supply chains:towards an integrated approach, SRI Working Paper No. 79, SRI Papers (Online) ISSN 1753-13 http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/fileadmin/Documents/research/sri/workingpapers/SRIPs-79.pdf
ESRC LSSI Impact Accelerator Grant: “Embedding a learning culture and facilitating Fairtrade –academic links” . PI working with Joy Justice, building on her PhD work with Fairtrade International. This has led to a joint paper (due out shortly in Food Chain) & workshop with the Monitoring and Evaluation and Learning Unit at Fairtrade International and a training tool for facilating academic-NGO resarch partnerships, see briefing note "Game play as a safe critical space for exploring research collaboration" .
Climate Information for Resilient Tea Production (CI4T), CoI on project funded by CDKN from May 2017 to April 2018 led by Professor Andy Dougill, http://www.futureclimateafrica.org/news/launch-of-climate-information-for-resilient-tea-production-ci4t-project/
I was Principal Investigator for an ESRC-DFID research project - The Governance Implications of Private Standards Initiatives (2007-2010). Much of my research has been related to sustainability standards including fair trade. I recently wrote a chapter on Fair Trade in Africa to this edited volume: The Handbook of Research on Fair Trade, eds. Laura T. Raynolds and Elizabeth A. Bennett, London: Edward Elgar, March 2015. http://cfat.colostate.edu/fair-trade-handbook/ .
This working paper draws on some of my experince on sustainability standards:
Tallontire, A., Nelson, V., Benton, T. and Dixon, J. (2012), ‘A review of the literature and knowledge of standards and certification systems in agricultural production and farming systems’. NRI Working Paper, No.2. September, 2012. UK: Chatham. http://www.nri.org/projects/tradestandards/docs/assessing_the_governance.pdf
PhD Supervision
Completed PhDs
- Mina Said Allsopp: Female Empowerment Within Global Value Chains: A Study of the Dynamics of Employment within Kenyan Export Industries
- Betty Chinyamunyamu: The Impact of Government Interventions in Agriculture on Women Farmers: The Case of the Malawi Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP)
- Rowshan Hannan: Reducing poverty through co-operative enterprises
- Rebecca Howard: Pathways to ‘Fair Carbon’: Assessing Fairness in Standard Setting and Carbon Projects
- Adrian Fenton: Climate change adaptation and microfinance: A potential win-win scenario?
- Claudia Pollen: An Analysis of Women’s Agency in the Zambian Floriculture Industry using a Global Production Network Approach: Mechanisms and Pathways for Agency.
- Liz Morgan: 'Ways of framing climate change to drive material scale mitigation and adaptation strategies of large consumer-facing businesses'ly supervising the following postgraduate researchers:
- Simon Manda: Large Scale Agricultural Investment and livelihood impacts: the case of sugar in Zambia
I am currently supervising the following PG researchers:
- Laura Smith: How can peace research contribute to thinking about CSR and development and in what ways can approaches to CSR deliver sustainability in extractive contexts in the global south? [with James Van Alstine]
- Heather Briggs: Vertical agriculture in Europe: what contribution to sustainability? [with Andy Dougill]
- Jose Manuel Vega Barbero: Supply chain resilience through fair trade and co-operative governance [with Bob Doherty at York and Martin Dallimer]
Qualifications
- BA (1st class honours) Economics, Politics with North American Studies, University of Leeds, 1991
- MA (Distinction) Development Studies, University of Leeds, 1993
- PhD, Development and Project Planning Centre, University of Bradford, 1999
Professional memberships
- Fellow of the Higher Education Academy
Student education
I am the Faculty of Environment’s Pro-Dean for Student Education, and in addition to faculty responsibility for our Undergraduate and Taught Postgraduate programmes, I chair the Student Experience and Success Steering Group & the Professional Development and Recognition Group in Organisational Development and Professional Learning (ODPL). I have previously been involved in the University's Inclusion and Engagement Strategy Group, Academic Leadership Roles Working Group and TSEC for ODPL, with responsibility for oversight of new PRISE and PGCAP teaching recognition schemes. I chaired a university-wide initative to create an online resource and insitutional approach to Welcome, Induction and Transition for the academic year 2020-21.
I have a Higher Education Academy Fellowship (2010) and was awarded a University Student Education Fellow (USEF) in 2013-14. Using funds from this award I undertook an investigation into how staff can facilitate better engagement in group work by students. This project "Making Group Work Work" has produced the following which have been presented and discussed at faculty and LITE Seminars (September and October 2016) and the University’s annual Student Education Conference (Jan 2017).
- Making Group Work Work: A resource for planning and reflection - This is a four page resource to enable a lecturer to guide themselves through planning group work, drawing on lessons from the literature
- Working paper: Making Group Work Work: Improving university group work for students and staf - A detailed working paper, including literature review, project methodology, findings (including case studies), discussion and conclusions
I currently contribute to undergraduate and postgraduate teaching on the BA Environment and Business and MSc Sustainability and Business programmes, drawing on my experience of the role of the private sector in development, sustainable supply chains and the role of private and multi-stakeholder standards such as Fairtrade.
Research groups and institutes
- Business Organisations for Sustainable Societies
- Environment and Development
- Sustainability Research Institute