Lecturer II
Stephen Commins is the Academic Director and Lecturer for the Master of Science in Humanitarian Action in the Kroc School. He was a Lecturer in Regional and International Development in the Department of Urban Planning, Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA for over 30 years. He has over four decades of program experience with the World Bank, the UK government, UN agencies and international NGOs in programs related to human, social and environmental development, as well as specific contexts of disaster and FCV settings. He is currently a Research Associate with ODI’s Poverty and Governance, and the co-lead for the Safety and Security team in the African Cities Research Consortium, and was recently a consultant with the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs global practice.
Dr. Commins was Director of the Development Institute at the UCLA African Studies Center and then Director for Policy and Planning at World Vision International, including serving as Chair of WVI’s Complex Emergencies Working Group. He was a Senior Human Development Specialist, Human Development Network, contributing to the Human Development background for the LICUS Task Force, and was one of the co-authors of the World Bank’s World Development Report 2004, including fragility and service delivery.
His work has included the synthesis paper on service delivery and fragility for OECD/DAC, a study on governance and urban fragility for OECD/DAC, a policy note and guidance resource for designing Multi-Donor Trust Funds or ‘Pooled Funds’ in fragile states, and eight years as an advisor for the Secure Livelihoods Research Consortium. His other projects have included a study of five World Bank Poverty Alleviation Funds in fragile South Asia contexts, support for World Development Report 2017 (Governance and the Law) and World Development Report 2018 (Education and the Learning Crisis), a project on with IDS Sussex on ‘Cities, Violence and Order’, and a background paper on FCV and Education for World Development Report 2018 (Education).