Miet Maertens is heading the Agricultural and Rural Development Economics research group, is professor at the Division of Bio-economics, and vice-chair of the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at KU Leuven in Belgium. She holds a PhD in agricultural economics from the Georg-August University in Goettingen, Germany and MSc. degrees in Economics and in Bioscience Engineering from KU Leuven, Belgium. Her research focuses on global food supply chains, agricultural intensification and rural development in low- and middle-income countries. She investigates vertical and horizontal coordination in food value chains; the sustainability impact of private food standards; the role of food trade as climate change adaptation mechanism; rural labour market dynamics; and the process of agricultural and rural transformation – with gender as a thread running through these research topics. She is leading several research projects on these topics and cooperates intensively with several universities in Africa (Senegal, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia), Latin-America (Peru, Ecuador) and Asia (Indonesia), and with CGIAR and other international institutes. She has co-authored numerous scientific articles and book chapters.