Professor Deborah Johnston is a Professor of Development Economics. She completed her BA and MPhil at Queens’ College Cambridge and her PhD in the Economics Dept at SOAS. Her academic work focuses on the intersection of poverty and other elements of wellbeing, such as nutritional status, health and education. She has mostly researched in countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Before joining academia in 2003, she worked internationally as an economist in a number of policy roles, with governments, NGOs and international organisations.
Research interests
Food, nutrition and agriculture
Rural poverty and labour markets. Land reform and development. Poverty, development and HIV/Aids.
Member of editorial board for Journal of Agrarian Change
Member of advisory board for SOAS Centre of Food Studies
Member of management committee for Leverhulme Centre for Integrative Research on Agriculture and Health http://www.lcirah.ac.uk/
Co-investigator in Fair Trade, Employment and Poverty Reduction Project, http://ftepr.org, a four-year DFID funded project looking at the impact of Fairtrade on wage workers in tea, coffee and cutflower production in Uganda and Ethiopia
Other research projects: - WHO PMNCH ‘Strategy Briefs on Cross Sectoral Approaches to Women's and Children's Health: Agriculture/Food and Nutrition’, September 2013 – October 2013. PI: Deborah Johnston. - DFID-funded – ‘Current and Planned Research on Agriculture for Improved Nutrition: A Mapping and a Gap Analysis’, March 2012 to July 2012. Principal Investigator: Dr. Corinna Hawkes (LCIRAH). Co-investigators: (LCIRAH) Rachel Turner; Elaine Ferguson; Deborah Johnston; Bhavani Shankar; Jeff Waage. University of Aberdeen: Farhana Haseen; Hilary Homans; Julia Hussein; Debbi Marais; Geraldine McNeill. - Foresight-funded – ‘Understanding and Improving the Relationship between Agriculture and Health’, June 2009-June 2010. Principal Investigator: Prof Jeff Waage (LCIRAH/SOAS). Co-investigators: Alan Dangour; Sophie Hawkesworth, Deborah Johnston, Karen Lock, Nigel Poole, Jonathan Rushton, Ricardo Uauy. - British Academy Small Grant - 'Farmwork and food: understanding women's employment and the shift to purchased food in Ethiopia', May 2014 to Sept 2014. PI: Deborah Johnston. - Danish Strategic Fund - 'Healthy and Affordable Protein for the African Middle-Class'. WP6 April 2015-April 2017: Consumer preferences and communication of product health properties in the West African market. WP-leader: Deborah Johnston. - IFPRI/LCIRAH - 'Women’s time use, food consumption and nutrition - a mixed studies review'. May 2014-April 2015. PI: Deborah Johnston. Co-investigators: Elizabeth Hull (SOAS, LCIRAH), Suneetha Kadiyala (LCIRAH, LSHTM), Hazel Malapit (IFPRI, A4NH), Sara Stevano (LCIRAH, SOAS).
The politics of agricultural policy and nutrition: A case study of Malawi’s Farm Input Subsidy Programme (FISP)
Walls, Helen, Johnston, Deborah, Matita, Mirriam, Kamwanja, Tayamika, Smith, Richard and Nanama, Simeon, 2023, PLOS Global Public Health (3), 10, pp e0002410
The impact of agricultural input subsidies on food and nutrition security: a systematic review
Walls, Helen, Johnston, Deborah, Tak, Mehroosh, Dixon, Jane, Hanefeld, Johanna, Hull, Elizabeth and Smith, Richard D., 2018, Food Security (10), 6, pp 1425-1436
From kitchen to classroom: Assessing the impact of cleaner burning biomass-fuelled cookstoves on primary school attendance in Karonga district, northern Malawi
Why is malaria associated with poverty? Findings from a cohort study in rural Uganda
Tusting, Lucy S., Rek, John, Arinaitwe, Emmanuel, Staedke, Sarah G., Kamya, Moses R., Cano, Jorge, Bottomley, Christian, Johnston, Deborah, Dorsey, Grant, Lindsay, Steve W. and Lines, Jo, 2016, Infectious Diseases of Poverty (5), 1
Measuring socioeconomic inequalities in relation to malaria risk: a comparison of metrics in rural Uganda
Tusting, Lucy S., Rek, John, Arinaitwe, Emmanuel, Staedke, Sarah G., Kamya, Moses R., Bottomley, Christian, Johnston, Deborah, Lines, Jo, Dorsey, Grant and Lindsay, Steve W., 2016, American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (94), 3, pp 650-658
How to do (and how not to do) fieldwork on Fair Trade and rural poverty
Cramer, Christopher, Johnston, Deborah, Mueller, Bernd, Oya, Carlos and Sender, John, 2014, Canadian Journal of Development Studies (35), 1, pp 170-185
Measuring socio-economic position for epidemiological studies in low- and Middle-income countries: a methods of measurement in epidemiology paper
Howe, Laura D, Galobardes, Bruna, Matijasevich, Alicia, Gordon, David, Johnston, Deborah, Onwujekwe, Obinna, Patel, Rita, Webb, Elizbeth A, Lawlor, Debbie A and Hargreaves, James R, 2012, International Journal of Epidemiology (41), 3, pp 871-886
Feeding the Worlth Healthily: the Challenge of Measuring the effects of Agriculture on Health
Hawkesworth, Sophie, Dangour, Alan D., Johnston, Deborah, Lock, Karen, Poole, Nigel, Rushton, Jonathan, Uauy, Ricardo and Waage, Jeff, 2010, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (365), 1554, pp 3083-3097
Johnston, Deborah and Walls, Helen (2019). In: Cheru, Fantu, (eds.), Cramer, Christopher, (eds.) and Oqubay, Arkebe, (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Ethiopian Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp 383-398
World Bank Research on HIV/AIDS: Praise Where It's Due?
Johnston, Deborah (2011). In: Bayliss, Kate, (eds.), Fine, Ben, (eds.) and Van Waeyenberge, Elisa, (eds.), The Political Economy of Development: The World Bank, Neoliberalism and Development Research. London: Pluto Press
Confusing counts, correlates and causes: The PRSP and poverty in Lesotho
Johnston, Deborah and Sender, John (2008). In: Rutten, M., (eds.), Leliveld, A., (eds.) and Foeken, D., (eds.), Inside Poverty and Development in Africa: Critical Reflections on Pro-Poor Policies. Leiden: Brill, pp 57-82
Agriculture, Gendered Time Use, and Nutritional Outcomes: A Systematic Review
Johnston, Deborah, Stevano, Sara, Malapit, Hazel, Hull, Elizabeth and Kadiyala, Suneetha (2015). Washington, DC: (International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) Discussion Paper no. 01456)
Understanding and Improving the Relationship between Agriculture and Health
Waage, Jeff, Dangour, Alan D., Hawkesworth, Sophie, Johnston, Deborah, Lock, Karen, Poole, Nigel, Rushton, Jonathan and Uauy, Ricardo (2010). London: (Foresight)
