Dennis Rodgers is a social anthropologist by training, with a BA and a PhD from the University of Cambridge, as well as a postgraduate degree from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a Senior Research Fellow in the Brooks World Poverty Institute (BWPI), at the University of Manchester, UK, where he leads their research programme on ‘Urban Poverty and Conflict’,1 and a Visiting Senior Fellow with the London School of Economics Crisis States Research Centre, where he is involved in their research on ‘Cities and Fragile States’.2 He was also a member of a Nicaraguan youth gang for a year.