International Advisory Group

The International Advisory Group comprises nine members drawn from key stakeholder groups and covering different disciplinary backgrounds, thematic and geographical expertise and academic and policy experience. The group supports the project by:

  • providing strategic direction and advice;
  • reinforcing links between the project and relevant academic, policy and funding communities;
  • providing a sounding board on research plans, methodological innovation and emerging findings;
  • ensuring that project activities and outputs are on track; and
  • overseeing project risks.
Jenny Pearce
Research Professor, London School of Economics

I was a Professor of Latin American Politics in the Department of Peace Studies in Bradford between 1992 to 2016, and Director of the International Centre for Participation Studies which I founded from 2004 to 2014.

I am now Research Professor at the Latin America and Caribbean Centre at the LSE. I am a specialist in issues of violence and social change in Latin America, with deep field experience in particular in Colombia, Mexico and Central America as well as researching the riot and participating in peace building in Bradford in the north of England. I have been active in developing participatory research methodologies for working in contexts of ‘chronic violence’.

I am currently Project Investigator on an ESRC/Newton Fund research project on ‘Co-Constructing Agendas for Security in Mexico: From Communities to the State’. I am also writing a book on Politics and Violence.

Emma Crewe
Research Professor, SOAS, University of London

I am a researcher at SOAS and a PhD supervisor at the Business School at the University of Hertfordshire. An anthropologist by training, I have taught at Sussex University and SOAS.

I worked in international development since the 1980s as a social scientist, policy adviser, manager and trustee in international NGOs. I was CEO of the INGO ChildHope 2006-2011, trustee of Practical Action (2007-2014) and am Chair of Health Poverty Action and Find Your Feet. My ethnographic research into organisations focuses on INGOs and parliaments in the UK, Eastern Africa and South Asia and I have advised the UK Parliament on research and evaluation.

I am currently Director of the Global Research Network on Parliaments and People, managing a research coalition – ‘Deepening Democracy’ – that gives grants and support to scholars and artists in Myanmar and Ethiopia  (£2m funded by the GCRF 2017-2020: http://parliaments4people.com/).

Sam Hickey
Professor of Politics and Development at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester

I am Professor of Politics and Development at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester, where I’ve been based since 2001. My research focuses on the links between politics and development, including issues of state capacity and elite commitment; natural resource governance; social exclusion and adverse incorporation; citizenship participation and NGOs; the politics of social protection and social justice.

For the past eight years I have been Research Director of the Effective States and Inclusive Development (ESID) research centre. Funded by DFID ( £9 million, 2011-2020), ESID is an international consortia that stretches across sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America, and which has examined a wide-range of issues, including the politics of growth, social provisioning, women’s empowerment and gender equity, natural resource governance, social protection, urban governance and public sector reform.

I am also the Principal Investigator on an ESRC-DFID grant which explores the role of bureaucratic pockets of effectiveness in five African countries ( £0.5 million, 2017-2020).

Tom Rodwell
Senior Conflict and Stabilisation Adviser in the UK Government Stabilisation Unit

Tom Rodwell is a Senior Conflict and Stabilisation Adviser in the Stabilisation Unit, where he has worked on developing analysis, lessons and policy guidance around conflict, instability and stabilisation interventions and is the regional lead for South Asia. As part of this work he has supported the formulation of UK, NATO and EU doctrine in relation to stabilisation. Tom was the lead author and editor of the UK Government’s revised 2018 Stabilisation Guide and also part of the team overseeing the 2017-18 Elite Bargains and Political Deals Research project conducted with academics from SOAS and KCL. 

Prior to working at the Stabilisation Unit he has worked in the Ministry of Defence as an analyst tasked to provide subject matter expertise on the political economy of southern Afghanistan examining the economic factors which influenced the human terrain, politics, and drivers of conflict at the provincial and district level. 

Before joining the Civil Service, Tom worked in the private sector, conducting political and economic risk analysis on emerging markets in Latin America, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He holds a BA in History from University College London and an MA in Conflict, Security and Development from King’s College London.

Mark Shaw
Director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime

Mark is Director of the Centre of Criminology at the University of Cape Town. He is also Director of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime in Geneva, and a Senior Associate of the LSE International Drug Policy Unit. He previously held the National Research Foundation Professor of Justice and Security at the University of Cape Town, Department of Criminology.

Mark worked for ten years at the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), including as Inter-regional Advisor, Chief of the Criminal Justice Reform Unit and with the Global Programme against Transnational Organized Crime. He led projects and provided technical assistance to national governments, bilateral donors and international organisations in Libya, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, West Africa, the Sahel and Southern Africa, on security sector and criminal justice reform and countering transnational threats.

Jennifer Stuttle
Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser, UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office

Jennifer Stuttle is Monitoring and Evaluation Adviser, currently leading evidence generation and uptake work for the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) inclusive economic development, governance, conflict and education programmes in North Africa.  Jennifer leads a thematic and portfolio evaluation activities and advises HMG teams on developing and using evidence-based theories of change to enhance programming accountability and learning.

Jennifer has over 20 years’ experience of working in and on conflict issues with UNDP, international NGOs, research organisations and consultancies in sub-Saharan Africa, south and south-east Asia. Jennifer has led multi-donor evaluations of conflict programming including leading in 2019, a review of UK, Australian and Swedish support to peacebuilding in Myanmar, served as an adviser to the development the OECD DAC guidelines for evaluating conflict prevention and peacebuilding programmes, and managed DFID’s Systematic Review and research evidence uptake programme. 

Jennifer holds a master’s degree from the Institute of Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester.