Stephen Commins is the Academic Director and Lecturer for the MSHA program. He is also a
Lecturer in Regional and International Development in the Department of Urban Planning, and
Associate Director, Global Public Affairs, Luskin School of Public Affairs, UCLA. 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 Fragility, Conflict and Violence settings. He was recently
a consultant with the World Bank’s Social Protection and Jobs global practice, including a paper
on the intersection between Gender Inequality, Climate and Fragility, and is currently a
Research Associate with ODI Global Poverty and Governance team, and the co-lead for the
Safety and Security thematic group in the African Cities Research Consortium.
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
Low-Income Countries Under Stress (Fragile States) 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 a synthesis paper on service delivery and fragility for OECD/DAC,
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.
Other projects have included a study of five World Bank Poverty Alleviation Funds in Fragility,
Conflict and Violence South Asia contexts, support for World Development Report 2017
(Governance and the Law), a project with IDS Sussex on ‘Cities, Violence and Order’, and a
background paper on FCV (Fragility, Conflict and Violence) and Education for the World
Development Report 2018 (Education). His humanitarian program work has included a four-
year project on local governments and disasters in Bangladesh, and four years as the lead
technical advisor for municipalities hosting Syrian refugees.