Kathryn English

co-director of the GJG

Kathryn English is a governance and justice adviser with over 20 years experience in the field (in Asia and Africa). As a barrister she practised criminal law in London. After human rights field work in Cambodia and Malawi she co-wrote the Human Rights Handbook - a practical guide to monitoring human rights. She joined USAID as senior governance adviser in Malawi between 1995-2004 before joining UNDP in the same position (2005-7).  She was invited to be a Visiting professor of law at Northwestern University, Chicago (2007/8) and co-founded the Governance and Justice Group in 2008. She has advised many development agencies and drafted policy notes for the UN and UK government. Between 2016 and 2018 she was team leader for the human rights support project training EU delegations worldwide in the human rights based approach. She was a senior security and justice adviser on the UK government's Stabilisation Unit from 2011 to 2022. Kathryn has worked since 2010 in developing together with other GJG practitioners the Justice Audit Methodology. In 2015-16 She worked with the Horizon Institute in Somaliland to apply the Methodology to create a Justice Snapshot for selected justice institutions in Somaliland. She was joint team leader on the Justice Audit Bangladesh 2018 and the earlier five district pilot, as well as the Justice Snapshot Somalia 2020 and Somaliland 2021.