Biography
Profile
Dr. Shimali Fred is an agri-social scientist with a PhD in Agricultural and Rural Innovation from Makerere University. His doctoral research examined women’s empowerment and children’s dietary diversity in rural Uganda, with a specific focus on how women’s participation in projects, household factors, and gender-role attitudes influence empowerment and children’s diets. Fred has over ten years of experience in research, consultancy, training, and organizing field-based studies. His work has been with reputable research and development organizations including Makerere University, FAO, ILRI, IFPRI, the World Bank, and the University of Bonn. His expertise includes mixed-methods research, qualitative and participatory approaches, gender analysis, food and agricultural systems, community engagement, monitoring and evaluation, and research coordination. Fred has led and supervised field teams, developed research tools, managed data collection, conducted qualitative and quantitative analysis using ATLAS.ti and Stata, and contributed to technical reports, manuscripts, training materials, and policy-oriented outputs. During his research tenure, Fred has also participated as a reviewer for reputable journals. Fred has trained in the Project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (Pro-WEAI) and has extensive experience integrating gender, social norms, empowerment, and decision-making perspectives into agricultural and rural development research. He also has substantial training experience supporting students on research methods at Makerere and Egerton University. His professional interests centre on action research, knowledge co-creation, gender-responsive agricultural transformation, food systems, and translating research evidence into actions for community transformation and policy. His work has received recognition through two PhD Research Grants under the Makerere University Research and Innovation Fund (RIF PhD Cohort). Fred also earned recognition as Runner-up in the first edition of GenderVision for Early Researchers at the Gender Impact Platform during the CGIAR GENDER Science Exchange week in Nairobi in 2022. He has also received a Certificate of Appreciation as a Trainer from the Feed the Future Nutrition Innovation Lab Africa (NILA), Tuskegee University.