Lisa Smirl was a lecturer in international relations at the University of Sussex. She worked previously for the United Nations Development Programme in Africa, Southeast Europe and Central Asia. A Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford, she did graduate work at the London School of Economics and completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge in 2010. Lisa was from Manitoba, Canada. She died in 2013 at the age of 37.
'Lisa's work is inspirational. She was one of the first to expose the spatial dimensions of aid and thus open to view a whole new area of critique and research - At a time when international aid workers are retreating from the terrestrial world and concentrating within international archipelago's of gated complexes and secure transport links, Lisa's becomes all the more important.' Mark Duffield, Professor Emeritus at the University of Bristol and Honorary Professor, University of Birmingham; author of Global Governance and the New Wars 'Lisa Smirl's work is innovative, interesting, engaging and critically challenging.' Stephen Hopgood, author of The Endtimes of Human Rights and Keepers of the Flame: 'Lisa Smirl is (or sadly, was) one of the most original and brilliant academics working on the global humanitarian order.' Tim Dunne, Professor of International Relations, University of Queensland