Lila Buckley
Senior researcher, Natural Resources (maternity leave)
Lila is an anthropologist specialising in ethnographic research methodologies with a focus on Chinese civil society, agriculture and environmental policy, as well as China-Africa agriculture aid, trade and investments. Beyond China, she also focuses on dynamics of the informal economy as well as organisational change management and disruptive change readiness in southern NGOs.
Work and field research experience in China, South-East Asia, US, and sub-Saharan Africa.
Lila leads the China in global development team, including overseeing team-level project development, fundraising and management, ensuring quality assurance on all research outputs and policy engagements, and fostering multi-disciplinary teams in China to develop their research and policy influence.
In addition, she has been developing IIED's 'disruptive change' initiative, which fosters learning on the practical aspects of NGOs' structural and functional responses to disruptive change in the post 2015 development world.
Assistant executive director of the Global Environmental Institute, Beijing, China.
Education
- MSc (Distinction) Environmental Change and Management, University of Oxford
- Blakemore Freeman Scholar, IUP Tsinghua University, Beijing; BA (suma cum laude)
- Chinese and Anthropology/Sociology, Middlebury College, US.
English (native); Mandarin Chinese (fluent); French (advanced)
Lila Buckley's blog posts
Interviews with Southern NGOs reveal valuable lessons in how to see disruptive change as a force for good – and highlight how donors and Northern partners can provide more effective support.
Chen promotes new agricultural techniques in China, but he dreams of farming in Senegal. Not because he is a cog in a neo-colonial machine driven by a Beijing masterplan to take over Africa, but because he wants to share his skills and do something meaningful.