Nisar Majid

Dr Nisar Majid is an associate at the Policy Practice. He has over 20 years of experience in international research and development, including food security and livelihoods analysis, political economy analysis, diaspora and transnational studies, cash-based programming and organisational reviews and evaluations. He has a special interest in the Somali peoples and areas of the Horn of Africa as well as in the wider diaspora.

Nisar’s early working life was in food security and livelihoods analysis, where he specialised in the household economy analysis (HEA) methodology. He has worked with government and international food security information (and early warning) systems in Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, and was regional (East Africa) food security and livelihoods advisor for Save the Children (UK), based in London.

His PhD thesis, completed in 2007, was entitled Livelihoods, Development and the Somali diaspora and was set within a literature on conflict, development and migration. In 2016 he co-authored the book, Famine in Somalia: Competing Imperatives, Collective Failures, 2011-12 (London: Hurst), under a study for Tufts University.

He has been involved in a variety of organisational and technical reviews and evaluations for a range of international agencies, including the European Union, the UK Department for International Development (now FCDO), United Nations Agencies, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Federation of the Red Cross & Red Crescent, and many other non-Governmental Organisations. He has conducted studies for the Rift Valley Institute (RVI), the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and Chatham House.

He was Research Director for the LSE Conflict Research Programme for 3 years (2018-21), a 5-country research programme where he led the Somalia portfolio.