Dr Bernd Mueller

East Africa (in particular: Tanzania, Ethiopia, Uganda), labour markets, political economy of development, agriculture, poverty reduction, agrarian change, livelihood diversification, development aid, commodity trade

Bernd is currently working as research officer in a 4-year research project on 'Fair Trade, Employment, and Poverty Reduction in Ethiopia and Uganda' which is conducted by SOAS researchers with the support from the UK Department for International Development (DfID). The research aims to improve our knowledge of the transmission mechanism linking trade in agricultural commodities with poverty reduction, especially via labour markets and it pays particular attention to the various institutional arrangements, codes of practice and so on, including Fair Trade and other certification schemes, that have been developed with the intention of helping to improve poor people's welfare and to protect them against the vagaries of international commodity markets. In this role, Bernd has travelled extensively throughout Ethiopia and Uganda to conduct, manage, and guide the collection of primary data in the form of large-scale surveys.