David is Professor and at the Institute for Development Policy and Management, University of Manchester. He is also Director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute, and CEO of both the Effective States and Inclusive Development Research Centre and the Brazil in Africa Research Programme. Previously, he was Head of Institute of Development Policy and Management (IDPM) (2010-2013) and Associate Director Chronic Poverty Research Centre (2005-2010), where he founded The Global Poverty Research Group. David recently published the book "Global Poverty: How Global Governance is Failing the Poor" (Routledge 2010).
Robert is Professor for Social Policy and currently Deputy Head of Department of Social Policy at Oxford University. He is a Research Affiliate of the National Poverty Centre, University of Michigan and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was a Member of the statutory UK Social Security Advisory Committee for 10 years until 2012 and chaired the Academic Advisory Committee during the design and launch of the ESRC UK Household Longitudinal Study. He is currently a member of the Expert Advisory Group for the evaluation of Universal Credit. In 2014 he published the book "The Shame of Poverty: global perspectives" (Oxford University Pres).