Kate Longley

Kate is a rural livelihoods and food security expert with over 25 years’ experience of applied research and development. Her research includes work on emergency seed systems, mostly in African countries affected by climate change and climatic shocks, civil conflict and the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, as well as relief-style seed interventions relating to national subsidy programs and social protection schemes. Kate has a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of London; her thesis provided an in-depth analysis of crop variability and farmer seed systems in Northern Sierra Leone.

Prior to joining CRS, Kate worked as an independent consultant, conducting evaluations and strategic reviews for various UN and USAID-funded programs and projects, encompassing seed systems, technology transfer, resilience, rural development, and research-for-development. She worked as a senior scientist for WorldFish in Zambia, where she served as country leader for a research-in-development program and conducted participatory action research on agricultural value chains. She previously worked as a research fellow at the Overseas Development Institute, based in Nairobi under a partnership with the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT). Kate lives with her husband and son in a rural village on the southwestern coast of the UK, where she enjoys Cornish pilot gig rowing, gardening and country walks.