Conway was educated at the Universities of Wales (Bangor), Cambridge, Trinidad and California (Davis). His discipline is agricultural ecology.

In the early 1960s, working in Sabah, North Borneo, he became one of the pioneers of integrated pest management. From 1970 to 1986, he was Professor of Environmental Technology at the Imperial College of Science and Technology in London. He then directed the sustainable agriculture program of the International Institute for Environment and Development in London before becoming Representative of the Ford Foundation in New Delhi from 1988 to 1992. He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex and Chair of the Institute for Development Studies.

Conway was elected the twelfth President of The Rockefeller Foundation in April 1998.

In June 2004 Conway was awarded an honorary degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University. In the same year he was elected as Fellow of the Royal Society

Conway took up his appointment as DFID’s Chief Scientific Adviser in January 2005.

He was listed on the The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll and is the current president of the Royal Geographical Society. President

He has authored Unwelcome Harvest: agriculture and pollution (Earthscan, Island Press) ISBN 1853830364, recently The Doubly Green Revolution: Food for all in the 21st century (Penguin and University Press, Cornell) ISBN 0801486106 ; Islamophobia: a challenge for us all (The Runnymede Trust) ISBN 0-902397-98-2.