Stephen Chan OBE was the Foundation Dean of Law and Social Sciences at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and was 2010 International Studies Association Eminent Scholar in Global Development. He was 2015 Konrad Adenauer Chair of Academic Excellence at Birzeit University, Palestine and 2016 George Soros Chair of Public Policy at the Central European University, Budapest. A former member of the Commonwealth Secretariat, he helped invent modern electoral observation at the independence elections of Zimbabwe in 1980, and has published 31 books, several on Zimbabwe.