Biography|Inger Andersen — The Development Degree She Took at SOAS

After a BA in 1981 from the Polytechnic of North London, now London Metropolitan University, she crossed Bloomsbury for a one-year master's.

In 1982 she completed an MA at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, with a specialization in development studies focused on economics.

The college sits at 10 Thornhaugh Street, on Russell Square, in the block between Senate House and the British Museum.

The Philips Building library by Denys Lasdun, later listed Grade II*, was only nine years old when she arrived.

UNEP's own biography and the UN Secretary-General's appointment note both name the BA and the SOAS MA.

That same year she left London for Sudan as an English teacher on a UK-funded programme.

In 1985 she joined SudanAid, the development and relief arm of the Sudan Catholic Bishops' Conference, working on famine, drought, and rehabilitation.

The dryland years are what later UN notes treat as the start of the career, not the lecture rooms.

From Sudan she moved to the UN Sudano-Sahelian Office in New York, still on drought and desertification.

The rooms on Thornhaugh Street still stand. The degree is the documented turn.

Photo: Acumen Images, SOAS Building, London, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.