Claire Coote

Claire Coote

Teaching & Learning Leader, Natural Resources Institute

Key details

Claire Coote

Teaching & Learning Leader, Natural Resources Institute


Claire Coote is a Principal Economist and the Teaching & Learning Leader for the Natural Resources Institute.

She joined Natural Resources Institute (NRI) in 1997 having worked in Papua New Guinea for an international development capacity building project, for the EU, for ODA (now FCDO) and for international organisations in Geneva (ILO, GATT). Her work at NRI is mainly in postharvest areas of agriculture, particularly in market access and value chain development; Claire has also been involved in social forestry research, particularly in Malawi, and in biomass energy applications for SME in Sri Lanka and Belize.

During the last decade Claire has become engaged in university teaching, developing courses at Masters level, on Corporate Social Responsibility and Natural Resources Management; Economics, Agriculture and Markets; Understanding Rural Development; Food Marketing, and Food Ethics. She has also developed and delivered a complete MA programme – Rural Development Dynamics asn has used her experience of teaching, particularly of international students, at the University of Greenwich to get involved in supporting teaching and learning at other universities, in the UK and in Africa.

A full staff profile can be seen on the Natural Resources Institute website.

Research / Scholarly interests

Claire is particularly interested in agricultural education delivery and the learning challenges faced by international MSc students in the UK and in developing country universities. Current focus is on provision of education to many students rather than on the quality of the education provided and the usefulness of such education for employers and for self-employment.

She is also interested in the development impact of PhD research undertaken by developing country Commonwealth Scholars studying in the UK and selection of appropriate indicators to measure the future impact of resources invested by donors in PhD training.