Dr Alec Thornton

Dr Alec Thornton is a Climate-Migration-Conflict Research Analyst in the B-EPICC Project at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. He conducts research and networking efforts in Brazil and Ethiopia, with a focus on land and forest change and their impact upon migration movements, as well as potential conflict.

Alec has a PhD in Development Studies from the University of Sussex, UK. Before joining PIK, Alec was an academic in Australia with nearly 15 years of experience in research, tertiary teaching and doctoral supervision. Most recently, he was a Senior Lecturer in Geography at the University of New South Wales, UNSW Canberra. At UNSW, he was Academic Co-Lead for Africa in its Institute for Global Development. For many years, he served as Vice-President of the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific.

In his research, Alec typically takes Participatory and Sustainable Livelihoods approaches to monitoring and evaluations of food security, rural-urban migration and agriculture. He has widely published on these topics in empirical case studies located in Uganda, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Zambia, as well as in Australia, Germany and the USA. He remains Honorary Senior Lecturer in Geography at UNSW Canberra and Research and Practice Associate at the Institute for Global Development (IGD) at UNSW Sydney. Alec is also Senior Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg, in the School of Humanities, Department of Anthropology and Development Studies.

Alec is originally from Massachusetts, USA, near Boston. He has recently relocated to Germany from Australia. In his free time, he enjoys hiking with his family and rhodesian ridgeback dog. Alec is also a qualified Personal Trainer and former US Marine.

Specialties: participatory research, informal sector analysis, rural-urban migration, sustainable livelihoods, food security, food systems governance, urban and rural agriculture

Recent Publications
Thornton, A. "Urban Guerrilla Gardening and Health." In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Global Public Health. Ed. David McQueen. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Nop, S., Thornton, A. and Tranter, P. (2023). Towards effective stakeholder collaboration in building urban resilience in Phnom Penh: opportunities and obstacles. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 25(1), 297-320.

Arthur, H., Tranter, P. and Thornton, A. (2022) Private Actors and Food Safety Governance in the Accra City Region: Implications for Local Food Policy Governance. Cities 131 p. 104069.

Arthur, A., Sanderson, D., Tranter, P. and Thornton, A. (2022) A review of theoretical frameworks of food system
governance, and the search for food system sustainability. Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems 46(8): 1277-1300.

Cochrane, L. and Thornton, A. (2022) Individual and Institutional Drivers of Inequality in Rural Agricultural Contexts. Northeast African Studies 21(1): 19-44.

Nop, S., Thornton, A. (2020) Community participation in modern urban development planning: A case of Phnom Penh city, Cambodia. Cities Vol. 103: 104069 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2020.102770

Cochrane, L., Lewis, S., Mastawesha, ME., Thornton, A., and Welbourne, D. (2020) Using farmer-based metrics to analyse the amount, seasonality, variability and spatial patterns of rainfall amidst climate change in southern Ethiopia. Journal of Arid Environments Vol. 175: 104084 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaridenv.2019.104084

Nop, S. and Thornton A. (2019) Urban resilience building in modern development: A case of Phnom Penh city, Cambodia. Ecology and Society 24(2): 23.

Books
Thornton, A. (ed) (2020) Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South Palgrave MacMillan. ISBN 978-3-030-17186-5

Thornton, A. (2018) Space and Food in the City: Cultivating social justice and urban governance through urban agriculture. Palgrave MacMillan

Edited Book Chapters
Gbanie S.P., Thornton A. (2021) Agro-Industrial Mega-Land Deals in Sierra Leone: Beyond the Rhetoric of Beneficiation, Employment and Economic Development. In: Cochrane L., Andrews N. (eds) The Transnational Land Rush in Africa. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60789-0_7

Dela Cruz, I., Thornton, A. and Haase, D. (2020) Smart food cities on the menu? Integrating urban food systems into smart city policy making. In Urban Food Democracy and Governance in North and South Palgrave MacMillan ISBN 978-3-030-17186-5.

Thornton, A. (2018) Food security in African Cities. In Binns, T., Lynch, K and Nel, E (eds) The Routledge Handbook of African Development Routledge: London. ISBN 9781138890299