Dr Anabel Marín is a Research Fellow and Leader of the Business, Markets & State Cluster at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), and a researcher at CONICET in Argentina (currently on leave). She holds a PhD in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Sussex, a Master’s in Development from the University of General Sarmiento, and a degree in Economics from the University of Córdoba. Since joining IDS in 2021, she has developed a distinctive agenda linking critical minerals, legitimacy, civic power and green industrial policy. Her research challenges narrow framings of the energy transition by showing how mineral extraction is embedded in political contestation, territorial dynamics and shifting geopolitics, including the growing but often implicit role of military and security demand. She co-developed the first global geo-referenced dataset on conflict and cooperation related to mining, now informing several research programmes and policy debates.
A second strand of her work examines innovation systems underpinning mission-critical technologies, including vaccines, biologics and seeds , and the socio-political capabilities required for resilience, scale and inclusive governance. She has led multi-country projects on vaccine innovation (ESRC–JSPS), agrifood and seed systems (EU, IDRC, CIRAD), and food-systems transformation in fragile contexts.
Her work is explicitly interdisciplinary and policy-facing. Beyond producing academic outputs, she has worked directly with governments, international organisations and development banks, including the World Bank, IDB, ADB, ECLAC, UNCTAD, UNESCO and UNIDO, to inform policy design, navigate trade-offs and support decision-making under conditions of uncertainty, political contestation and time pressure. This experience has strongly shaped her research agenda and her approach to knowledge for policy, including the translation of research into policy briefs, advisory reports and public-facing analysis. Her commitment to collaborative, international and policy-relevant research was recognised in 2025 with Argentina’s national Premio RAÍCES for scientific cooperation and policy impact.
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