Emeritus Professor of Water and Irrigation Policy at the University of East Anglia, UK  

With training in soils and irrigation, Bruce Lankford has more than 40 years’ experience in agriculture, irrigation and water resources management. His career spans engineering and social sciences, and has been informed by practical experience and field research in irrigation. As such, he has developed an interdisciplinary, system- and people-focused cross-scale approach to water. His research interests covers smallholder irrigation in Africa, irrigation infrastructure and management; examining and theorizing resource use efficiency and the paracommons; studying river basin management and intersectoral water allocation; and connecting irrigation to water, ecosystem services and drought resilience.  He is the creator of the river basin game, also known as the marbles game, which was developed in Southern Tanzania to help irrigators resolve conflicts over water distribution. He is also the inventor of a co-creation workshop format called ‘rapid games design’.  

He has more than 100 peer-review papers and was responsible for the publication of two books on water security and resource efficiency. He has been a co-Director of the University of East Anglia’s Water Security Research Centre.  Key countries worked include Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Rwanda, India and Kyrgyzstan. He has collaborated with many organizations including FCDO, WaterAid, World Bank, and IWMI.