Titles

• Senior Global Futures Scientist, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory
• Research Professor, Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems

Biography

Mauricio R. Bellon is a research professor at the Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems at Arizona State University. Prior to joining ASU, Bellon was an independent scientist and Honorary Fellow at the National Commission for the Use and Knowledge of Biodiversity (CONABIO), Mexico.

He is a human ecologist focusing on sustainable agricultural and food systems around the world. His research has focused on the reasons, incentives and dynamics of crop diversity managed by farmers in their agricultural systems—both at the inter-specific and intra-specific levels—under different circumstances. He is interested in the links of crop diversity with crop evolution, human diets, seed systems, livelihoods, climate change, and agricultural technology. During his career he has led multidisciplinary and multicultural teams across different countries, as well as done direct fieldwork with communities in Mexico, the Philippines, Vietnam, India, Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Peru, Ecuador, Benin, Mali, Ghana, and Bangladesh. Previously he was Coordinator of Studies on Agrobiodiversity at CONABIO. Before this he was Principal Scientist and Programme Director, Diversity for Livelihoods Programme, at Bioversity International (Italy). He also has worked for the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT, Mexico), the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, The Philippines) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). He is member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences and an Affiliate, Gund Institute for the Environment, University of Vermont, as well as member of the Scientific Steering Committee of the Global Research Project EvolVES, embedded in Future Earth.

Education

• PhD, Ecology, University of California-Davis
• MS, Ecology, University of California-Davis
• Ingeniero Agrónomo, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Mexico CityUniversidad

Expertise

• agriculture and food systems
• agricultural biodiversity
• dietary diversity
• qualitative research methods
• Quantitative research methods (statistics, econometrics)