Before his retirement, Bill Slee was Head of the Socio-Economic Research Group (SERG) in the Macaulay Institute which evolved into the Social, Economic and Geographical Sciences Group (SEGS) in the James Hutton Institute. Previously he had been Professor of Rural Economy and Director of the Countryside and Community Research Unit in the University of Gloucestershire. He is an interdisciplinary social scientist with a first degree in Geography from Cambridge, where he was an Exhibitioner, and a PhD in Aberdeen on agricultural economics and rural development. Earlier in his career he was a lecturer and senior lecturer in Plymouth and Aberdeen Universities. He led the growth of SERG in the Macaulay institute and SEGS in the newly formed James Hutton Institute and actively promoted both collaboration with natural scientists in interdisciplinary work and free-standing social science related to natural resource use and management.
Most of his research has focussed on interrelationships between the farming and forestry sectors and the other component parts of the rural economy and the exploration of the environmental externalities associated with rural land use. He has pioneered mixed methods research in exploring forestry's impact on rural development. He has published widely across a range of scientific fields. He served on the Royal Society of Edinburgh's Inquiry into the Future of Scotland's Hills and Islands and is currently Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Forest Institute. He is a board member of the Macaulay Development Trust as well as three other trusts. Since his retirement from the James Hutton Institute, he has worked on a number of European projects and is a core team member of the Brussels-based European Evaluation Network for Rural Development.
