Born in London in 1953, he was educated at Westminster School and the University of Oxford.
Changing his academic focus from Engineering to Economics, after an MSc at Birkbeck College, London, Fforde attained his Ph.D (with a thesis on 'Problems of Agricultural Development in North Vietnam') from Cambridge University in 1982.
He spent the 1980s and 1990s in Hanoi and Canberra advising on development practice for national aid agencies and NGOs operating in South-East Asia.
[1] Accepting a Fellowship in 1999 at the National University of Singapore, Fforde subsequently held a number of academic posts in Melbourne, Australia.
He is currently among the most widely cited academics writing on contemporary Vietnam,[2] as well as the author of textbooks and critical works on the theory and methodology of development practice.