Michael has been working with the research unit since 1998. For eleven of those years he has also been a (part-time) Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. His current research focuses on strategies for enhancing state capability for implementation, on crafting more mixed methods to assess 'complex' development interventions. In addition to more than 75 journal articles and book chapters, he is the co-author or co-editor of eight books. He is a co-founder of the World Bank's global Justice for the Poor program; in 2007-2009 he was the founding research director of the Brooks World Poverty Institute at the University of Manchester (on external service leave from the Bank); and he has just returned from 18 months in Malaysia, where he helped establish the World Bank's first Knowledge and Research Hub.