Johan "Jo" Swinnen is the Director General of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI),[1] and Managing Director of the Systems Transformation Science Group of CGIAR[2].He is known for his work on agricultural and food policy, political economy, institutional reforms, trade, and global value chains within the context of international development.
Dr. Swinnen earned his doctoral degree in agricultural economics from Cornell University in 1992.
In 1992, he became senior economist at the Leuven Institute for Central and East European Studies.
[5] During this period, he was also a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies[6] in Brussels.
In July 2021, he also became the Managing Director of the Systems Transformation Science Group of CGIAR.