About the speaker:

Helen Lackner worked as a consultant in social aspects of rural development for four decades in over thirty countries, mostly in the Middle East, Africa and Europe.  She is currently a research associate at the London Middle East Institute in SOAS.  She has been involved in Yemen since the early 1970s where she lived in all three Yemeni states for over 15 years.   She now focuses on analysis and writing, trying to promote commitment to equitable development and peace in Yemen.  Her recent publications include Yemen’s Peaceful transition from autocracy: could it have succeeded? (International IDEA 2016) and Understanding the Yemeni Crisis: the transformation of tribal roles in recent decades (Durham, Luce Fellowship Paper 17, 2016). In  2014, she edited Why Yemen Matters (Saqi). She has just published Yemen in Crisis:  autocracy, neo-liberalism and the disintegration of a state   (Saqi, 2017)