Mireille’s is a postgraduate researcher at IDS. Her doctoral research looks at the governance of urban security. Specifically, her research sets out to explain which factors – whether formal or informal – determine why and how actors disempowered by law can become influential in the governance of security. Exploring this question at city scale – in this instance, in the Nepalese city of Janakpur – enables her to map a complete urban security network, and capture some of the finer dynamics explaining how this network operates and changes.

Mireille has over 10 years experience as a community security practitioner in contexts such as the Philippines, Haiti, the Central African Republic and Somalia, principally with UNDP. In 2012 she was also elected as residents’ representative in a participatory process initiated by the Municipality of Geneva (Switzerland), where she facilitated the working group on safety and security. With these backgrounds as development practitioner, concerned citizen, and now academic researcher, she feels particularly strongly about designing research that will help bridge gaps between academia, policy, and practice. Mireille is also employed as a Capacity Development Coordinator on IDS’ Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA) programme.

Thesis title: ‘Influencing policing: A social network analysis of the governance of security in a secondary city in Nepal’

Supervisors: Eric Kasper, Shandana Khan Mohmand and Deepta Chopra