Violet Lasdun is a PhD candidate in Environmental Economics at the London School of Economics, and a visiting researcher with the Alliance of Bioversity and CIAT in Arusha, Tanzania. Her research examines how artificial intelligence and digital tools can support inclusive agricultural development by improving data collection, farmer feedback systems, and crop variety evaluation in the Global South. She works closely with plant breeding programs and rural communities to integrate farmer perspectives into breeding decisions and agricultural policy design. Her current work combines speech- and image-based data collection, natural language processing, and portfolio theory to model farmer crop adoption under risk and to inform selection processes in participatory plant breeding.

Prior to her PhD, Violet completed an MSc in Agricultural Economics at McGill University, where she developed an SMS platform for farmer-to-farmer knowledge sharing, and studied the behavioral effects of digital peer networks on technology uptake. She also holds a BA from McGill University in Philosophy, with minors in Economics and World Religion, and spent time studying at Kyoto University in Japan. Her research has been published in the Journal of Development Economics, Agricultural Systems, and the Journal of Environment and Development Economics.