Cathy Haenlein is Director of the Organised Crime and Policing research group and Senior Research Fellow at RUSI, with expertise in serious and organised crime, illicit trade, conflict and development. Cathy has a particular focus on transnational environmental crime, with regional expertise in East and Southern Africa, including fieldwork in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Madagascar, the Seychelles, Malawi, Mozambique, Gabon and Sierra Leone. Cathy is the editor, with M L R Smith, of Poaching, Wildlife Trafficking and Security in Africa: Myths and Realities (Abingdon: Taylor and Francis, 2016). She is also the Chair of RUSI’s Strategic Hub for Organised Crime Research, established in partnership with the Home Office, National Crime Agency, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and Research Councils UK’s Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security.
Cathy is a Research Associate and guest lecturer in King’s College London’s Marjan Centre for the Study of War and the Non-Human Sphere. Before joining RUSI in 2012, she worked in Madagascar as a Project Development Specialist for an international NGO. She also spent five years in Italy, working with European publications on EU–African relations, development cooperation and migration. Cathy holds an MSc in African Politics from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, with a focus on crime, conflict and peacekeeping – as well as a BA from Durham University in Combined Social Sciences (Politics, Criminology, Geography).
She can be found on Twitter at: @Cathy_Haenlein