Alan Winters is Professor of Economics and a Fellow and Founding Director of the UK Trade Policy Observatory in the University of Sussex. He is a leading contributor to the debate on Brexit and the UK's post-Brexit trade policy. From 2008 to 2011, he was Chief Economist at the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID), and from 2004 to 2007 Director of the Development Research Group of the World Bank.
He was editor of The World Trade Review (2008-2020). He has also recently completed terms as Chairman of the Board of the Global Development Network, Membership of the Council of the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council and Chair of its Research Committee and Chief Executive Officer of the Migrating Out of Poverty Research Programme Consortium.
He has advised, inter alia, various UK government departments, the OECD, the Commonwealth Secretariat, the European Commission, the European Parliament, UNCTAD, the WTO, and the Inter-American Development Bank. He was made a Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath in 2012. His current work is almost wholly devoted to research and policy analysis on the trade policy implications of Brexit.
