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Professor Peter Dorward

Peter Dorward portrait

Areas of interest

Innovation and smallholder agriculture. Areas of particular interest include:

  • Developing climate services and approaches to support farmer decision making
  • Promoting smallholder adaptation and developing resilience to climate variability and change
  • Understanding decision making in smallholder households and implications for innovation and support
  • Participatory approaches for facilitating farmer innovation in smallholder farming systems
  • Extension and communication for smallholder farming systems
  • Participatory varietal selection of crop varieties and strengthening local seed systems
  • Integrating improved soil management within smallholder farming systems
  • Promoting agricultural innovation in post-conflict areas
  • Participatory natural resource management
  • Improving smallholder livestock production in the context of integrated systems

Postgraduate supervision

I supervise PhD research student projects in these areas and teach postgraduate modules on Participation and Development. I have carried out research for a variety of funders in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and Central and South America. Research publications are listed at the foot of this page.

Research projects

Recent and current research projects (since 2014) on climate services, innovation systems and agriculture that I have been Principal-Investigator or Co-Investigator for include:

  • Traits and technologies to boost North African protein self-sufficiency (BEANS4N.AFRICA). 2017-2019. UK Research Council (BBSRC GCRF). Co-I Responsible for the social science component of the project.
  • Participatory Integrated Climate Services for Agriculture (PICSA) as an approach to improving climate services for farmers in Lesotho. 2017-2020. UN IFAD and Government of Lesotho. PI.
  • The potential for PICSA in Guyana and the Caribbean. 2016-2017. Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) & USAID. PI.
  • Climate Services for Agriculture: Empowering Farmers to Manage Risk and Adapt to a Changing Climate in Rwanda. 2016-2020. IRI & USAID. PI.
  • Developing and adapting PICSA approach for agricultural systems and climate in Rwanda and scaling out to cover all districts. Integrating novel meteorological components and researching factors influencing scaling out. PI.
  • Global Framework for Climate Services Adaption Programme in Africa - Support Development of Tailored Climate Services across timescales, responsive to needs of farmers in target GFCS project districts, Tanzania and Malawi, 2015 -2016. CCAFS and CIAT. PI.
  • Developing and testing mobile Apps for communicating climate and weather information and as decision support tools for farmers and advisors. 2015. CCAFS, ILRI. Principal Investigator. PI.
  • CASCAID (Capacitating African Smallholders with Climate Advisories and Insurance Development). 2015-2018. ICRAF, CCAFS. Principal Investigator. Part of larger project. UoR component also involves Statistical Services Centre (SSC) and focusses on improving forecasting, Met. data analysis, use of satellite information, and communication and farmer planning and decision making tools. Across four countries in West Africa. PI.
  • Review of use and potential for mobile Apps for use in communicating climate and weather information. 2014. CCAFS, ILRI. PI.
  • Innovation systems, agricultural growth and rural livelihoods in East Africa. 2012 -2014. ESRC-DFID. Working in three countries (Uganda, Kenya and Sudan) to investigate agricultural policy and compare with innovation systems operating in practice. Estimated economic impact of agricultural innovation and sought to understand and describe innovation processes and effects. PI.
  • Research on climate change in East Africa. Phase 2 of Rockefeller Foundation grant. School of Agriculture, Policy and Development component. 2012-15. Investigated the processes used by and information employed in government and non-government organisations in the planning of (climate) adaptation programmes. Developed and tested novel framework for planning. Co-I.
  • Developing and evaluating communication approaches and materials for climate services. 2014. CCAFS, CIAT. Creating and testing approaches for use with agricultural extension and NGO staff and smallholders. PI.