Lisa Denney

Lisa Denney joined ODI as a Research Officer in November 2010. She has recently completed her PhD in International Politics at Aberystwyth University, focusing on the challenges of engaging informal security actors in DFID’s policing and justice reform programmes in Sierra Leone. Lisa has work experience on issues of disarmament, citizen security and youth education/reintegration in West Africa and East Timor and has also worked as a Research Assistant at the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland, Australia. Her interests focus on the relationship between security and development, post-conflict peacebuilding and informal governance practices, particularly the roles played by chiefs, secret societies and trade associations at the local level. To date, her research has focused on the inability of donors to engage with these non-state governance actors in their efforts to transform the political landscape of fragile states, and therefore the need to better account for local governance practices, rather than focusing on high level politics and centralised states.