John McCarthy is an Associate Professor at the Australian National University’s Crawford School.

He works on questions of governance, institutions and rural development with a focus on forestry, agriculture, food security and land use.

At present he has an Australian Research Council funded project regarding social protection and food security in rural Indonesia. He was previously a Research Fellow at the Asia Research Centre, Murdoch University, Western Australia and Leiden University in the Netherlands.

He has carried out various assignments with agencies including AusAID (now DFAT), the World Bank, and the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).