Andy Sumner

Andy Sumner is a Professor of International Development in the Department of International Development. He is also Director of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Global Challenges Strategic Research Network on Global Poverty and Inequality Dynamics.

He has twenty years’ international research experience using both qualitative and quantitative methods and has published extensively, including ten books and fifty journal papers and book chapters. His most recent books are 'Global Poverty' (2016, Oxford University Press) and 'Development and Distribution' (2018, Oxford University Press).

He was appointed at King’s in 2012 and was a founding Co-Director of the King’s International Development Institute, which later became the Department of International Development. He is a member of the ESRC Peer Review College and has also held various roles in academic networks, including as a Vice President of, and UK representative to, the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI) from 2008 to 2014, and as a Council Member of the Development Studies Association, UK and Ireland, from 2000 to 2014.

He holds associate positions at Oxford University; the Center for Global Development, Washington DC; the United Nations University, WIDER, Helsinki; and the Centre for Economics and Development Studies, Padjadjaran University, Indonesia.

Andy's research is at the interface of international development studies and heterodox development economics. His area of expertise is poverty, inequality, and ‘inclusive growth’ in middle-income developing countries. He has pursued his research at two scales: 1) in the analysis of global poverty and global inequality; 2) in the analysis of poverty and inequality in the Southeast Asia region and Indonesia in particular.

He is well known for challenging prevailing assumptions about global poverty and theorising about the paradox of the persistence of global poverty alongside dramatic and sustained economic growth.

His research has been cited by non-governmental organisations (NGOs), by international development agencies such as the World Bank and United Nations agencies, and by media.

He has also been asked to contribute expertise to various policy-related processes, such as the Select Committees of the House of Commons, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and a Lancet Poverty Commission. He has been listed in US magazine Foreign Policy’s ‘Top 100 Global Thinkers’, and in the Huffington Post’s ‘Most Influential Voices’.