Asst. Prof. DENIS WAISWA

Denis Waiswa is an Agricultural Economist and Assistant Professor at Atatürk University, Türkiye. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics from Atatürk University (2021–2025), fully funded by the Turkish Government Scholarship (YTB). His research interests include agricultural policy analysis, applied welfare economics, impact assessment and evaluation, the adoption of agricultural innovations, and rural development.

His PhD research focused on understanding the barriers, behavioural drivers, temporal dynamics, and system-level trade-offs shaping the adoption and scaling of Push-Pull Technology (PPT) in East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Rwanda). He employed a comprehensive mixed-methods approach that integrated the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) framework and Participatory Impact Diagrams (PIDs), behavioural modelling based on the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) combined with PLS-SEM and Artificial Neural Networks, adoption timing analysis using hazard models and machine learning, and whole-farm bioeconomic modelling with stochastic simulation and optimization.

This research was conducted under the Postgraduate Research Training Fellowship of the African Regional Postgraduate Programme in Insect Science (ARPPIS), during which Denis served as a Postgraduate Research Fellow at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (2023–2025). The research was implemented within the DYNADOPT project (funded by the Biovision Foundation) and the UPSCALE project (funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 program), both aimed at scaling and evaluating PPT in East Africa.

Additionally, he also holds a Master’s degree in Animal Husbandry Economics and Management from Selçuk University (2018–2021), also fully funded by the Turkish Government Scholarship. And a Bachelor’s degree in Animal Production and Management from Busitema University (2013–2016), fully funded under the Government of Uganda National Merit University Scholarship.

In addition to his work on agricultural systems, Denis has contributed to policy-relevant research on agricultural markets and institutions, including licensed warehousing systems in Türkiye, employing causal inference methods such as matching models and treatment-effect estimators to assess their effects on farmer behaviour and welfare outcomes under a project funded by the TÜBİTAK.