Professor David Everatt, Head of School of the School of Governance, University of the Witwatersrand, has over 20 years of experience in applied socio-economic and development research, political and governance reform, designing and implementing monitoring systems, and programme evaluation. He has managed and/or participated in over 300 development projects, primarily in Africa. He was responsible for path-breaking research into youth marginalisation and out-of-school youth in South Africa in the early 1990s; his research into political violence was quoted at length by Nelson Mandela at the UN; he was the chief evaluator of the South African Constitutional Assembly between 1995 and 1997; and has served on successive election polling teams since 1994; and has researched issues from poverty and inequality to urbanism to class formation and voting behaviour. David designed civic education programmes in Kenya and Uganda, and led the Advisory Team reviewing Kenya’s Governance, Justice, Law and Order Sector (GJLOS) Reform Programme. He also headed a 2-year study of sustainable livelihoods in the 21 poorest nodal areas in South Africa. He was the founder Director of the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), a partnership between the universities of Johannesburg and Wits as well as provincial and local government. He was Vice-President (sub-Saharan Africa) for the ‘Sociology of Youth’ committee of the International Sociological Association for 14 years, and now sits on their Advisory Board, and serves on the Board of the Ahmed Kathrada Foundation and of the Charlotte Maxeke Hospital.