Lars Engberg-Pedersen got his MSc degree from Roskilde University in 1991 and his PhD from Copenhagen Business School in 1998. He was attached to the Centre for Development Research, Copenhagen, 1992-2000 working on poverty reduction, local organisations, natural resource management and decentralisation. He was International Director of Danish Association for International Cooperation (a major Danish NGO) 2000-2004 and worked on decentralisation as Principal Technical Advisor in the Ministry of Home Affairs in Burkina Faso 2004-2006. In 2007 he joined the Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS) where he works on different aspects of development cooperation. His publications include: Endangering development: Politics, projects and environment in Burkina Faso, Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 2003; In the name of the poor: Contesting political space for poverty reduction, edited together with Neil Webster, London: Zed Books, 2002; Fragile situations: Current debates and central dilemmas, with Louise Andersen and Finn Stepputat, Copenhagen: DIIS Report 2008:9; and The future of Danish foreign aid: The best of the second-best? In Danish Foreign Policy Yearbook 2009.