Liz David-Barrett joined the University of Sussex in 2014, following four years at Saïd Business School and two years in the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. Liz has a DPhil in Politics from Oxford, an MA in Slavonic and East European Studies from the University of London, and a BA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Oxford). Liz previously worked for London think tanks the Institute for Public Policy Research and the Centre for European Reform, political risk consultancy Oxford Analytica, and before that was a journalist in Croatia and Hungary, reporting for The Economist, the Financial Times, the BBC World Service and Business Central Europe.

As the Director of the Centre for the Study of Corruption (CSC), Liz leads the Centre’s activities in research, teaching and policy impact. She engages widely with anti-corruption practitioners in governments, the private sector and NGOs. Building on her research on corruption risks in public procurement, she has organised ‘hackathons’ in Ghana, Uganda and Tanzania with Maths students and civil society activists on how data can be analysed to identify grand corruption in government contracting. She also engages with the governments of Jamaica and Uganda to help them improve their procurement analytics.

Liz has written several reports for Transparency International - on the UK Bribery Act, lobbying and the revolving door, and local government corruption - and has given evidence to parliamentary select committees. She advised the UK Department for International Development on its International Anti-Corruption programme and the UK Cabinet Office on the 2017–22 National Anti-Corruption Strategy. Together with Paul Heywood (Nottingham), Liz co-edited a blog symposium on Re-thinking Corruption in the 21st Century, published in Public Administration Review. In 2020, she chaired the first ever Academic Roundtable of the G20 Anti-Corruption Working Group and in 2021 she became a member of the Taskforce on a Transatlantic Response to Illicit Finance.

Liz is one of the hosts of Kickback the Global Anticorruption Podcast, available on all major platforms.