Ben Belton is a fixed-term Assistant Professor at AFRE and a rural sociologist who has worked extensively in South and Southeast Asia for more than a decade, in countries including Bangladesh, Thailand and Vietnam. He joined MSU in 2015, and is based full-time in Burma as Deputy Chief of Party of the USAID funded Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Food Security Policy: Burma where he leads project research activities on agricultural commodity value chains, livelihoods and the rural economy. Ben is an expert on the of aquaculture and capture fisheries development and value chains, and their links to food and nutrition security, poverty, social wellbeing and the environment. Current focal areas of research in Burma include agricultural mechanization, migration, and rural transformation.