D Haese, Marijke

Marijke D’Haese is a Professor in rural development economics at the Department of Agricultural Economics of Ghent University. She spent her childhood in Africa and returned to home-country Belgium to study Bioscience engineering at Ghent University. She teaches development economics and rural development. Her research on rural institutions, labour conditions and governance structures adds a local layer to the UNU-CRIS work on regional integration, organisations and global institutions. She is one of the promotors of Chinedu Obi (PhD Fellow at UNU-CRIS), who studies the impact of migration from rural areas in Nigeria to Europe. Also, the work of Annelien Gansemans on labour conditions in global value chains which she supervised fits well with the mission of UNU-CRIS.

Her research focuses on the role of agriculture in rural development in the Global South. A special interest is on the impact of institutional changes in governance systems of land, labour, technology and market access on food security and family income. She approaches her research from the microeconomic theories, taking the farm, farm worker or rural household as focal points. Some studies also concentrate on the institutional environment (formal and informal governance structures). The geographic focus is the global south including countries in African, Latin American as well as Asia.

The results of the research activities are published in a range of journals in food, nutrition and agricultural economics and development studies. The majority of the publications are based on quantitative or qualitative data collected in the field.