George Scott Robertson Memorial Lecture 2021

Professor Maggie Gill OBE, FRSE will deliver this year's George Scott Robertson Memorial Lecture. The event will be delivered virtually.

We are honoured to welcome Professor Maggie Gill OBE, FRSE, as our Keynote speaker. Professor Gill is a former Chief Scientific Advisor for the Environment and Rural Affairs in the Scottish Government and is currently an emeritus Professor in the School of Biology, University of Aberdeen.

In a lecture entitled ‘Delivering Change in the Agri-Food Sector – Learning from Each Other’, Professor Gill will reflect on the outcomes of COP26 and recent strategic developments underpinning the future direction of the Northern Ireland agri-food ecosystem.

The memorial lecture is jointly hosted by AFBI, the Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) at Queen’s University, the Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU) and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA). The event commemorates the achievements of Dr George Scott Robertson who played a key role in promoting agricultural progress in Northern Ireland in the first half of the 20th century and registration is now open.

We look forward to engaging with you on what promises to be an excellent event and an interesting evening.

Speaker Biography

Professor Maggie Gill, OBE, FRSE

Professor Maggie Gill, OBE, FRSE is an emeritus Professor in the School of Biology, University of Aberdeen. From 2014 to 2019 Maggie was Chair of the Independent Science and Partnership Council of the CGIAR (a consortium of international agricultural research centres). She currently chairs an EU Think Tank for the project Fit4Food 2030 and the Science Advisory Panel of the New Zealand Government’s Our Land and Water National Challenge. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Biology and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

Maggie was Chief Scientific Advisor for the Environment and Rural Affairs in the Scottish Government from 2006 to 2011, after serving as CEO and Research Director of the Macaulay Institute (one of the predecessors of the James Hutton Institute). She went to the Macaulay after four years as CEO of Natural Resources International Ltd, a company owned by four universities which was spun out of the privatisation of the Natural Resources Institute (originally part of the UK Government Overseas Development Administration).

Maggie (an agricultural science graduate of Edinburgh University), has been a researcher (initially in animal nutrition), managed research programmes and advised governments on research, broadening her expertise to the interactions between food systems, society and the environment. She is passionate about bringing the policy and science communities closer together to help accelerate the use of knowledge in helping to deliver the Sustainable Development Goals.

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